What is VFP?

Have you heard someone mention Visual FoxPro recently and wondered what it really is?

Microsoft Visual FoxPro

Microsoft Visual FoxPro (VFP) is a rapid application development tool that focuses on data. It is simple enough to prototype with, yet scalable enough to build best practice enterprise wide applications.
Visual FoxPro is great for building desktop applications that are data rich. It talks to Oracle, SQL Server, mySQL and any other OLE-DB accessible data source, as well as its own internal database. Globally, the majority of FoxPro applications talk to SQL Server, followed by VFP’s own database engine.
VFP makes data binding incredibly easy (see this screen cast for a quick example), and has a local cursor engine ready for handling complex queries and in-line SQL calls with incredible speed. You can even bind directly to COM object properties. Incredible.
Visual FoxPro can also be used to build middle-tier data and business objects.
VFP is perfect for creating enterprise wide fully architected solutions. The business and data rules can be built into middle tier components and consumed by any front end application, including .Net and Java built programs.
Visual FoxPro also has an extremely functional, and very extensible reporting system all built into the product. Create and deploy reports easily in your applications.

Visual FoxPro

What is Visual FoxPro?
If you haven’t heard of Visual FoxPro (also referred to as VFP) before, or perhaps heard of it years ago and are wondering whether it is still around then there’s a few links here you will be interested in.
Maybe you are a .Net developer and curious as to what Visual FoxPro can give you that you don’t have already. If that’s you then why not watch a few of the screen casts I’ve prepared especially for the .Net community. Check out how easy data-binding and SQL Server integration are in VFP. You’ll be amazed…

Looking for product information on Visual FoxPro? Check out the Microsoft site.

Resources

Podcasts – Scott Scovell and I were the hosts of OzFoxRocks – an Australian based Visual FoxPro podcast. Every two months or so we chewed the fat on anything FoxPro related, particularly with topics relevant to Australian developers.

Screen casts – These screen casts are aimed at developers not familiar with Visual FoxPro, who want a quick (eg 7 minute) overview of some the really cool things it does. I reckon there is value for .Net developers in having VFP as a tool on your development machine.

FoxTabs – Scott Scovell and I have released an updated beta version of FoxTabs. FoxTabs gives you a great tabbed development environment in the VFP IDE.
[UPDATE] FoxTabs is now managed on VFPx