Microsoft Puts FoxPro Out to Pasture

Microsoft says Visual FoxPro 9.0 will be its last version of the development software, though support for the product will extend through 2015.

Microsoft has announced that it will not be releasing any new versions of its Visual FoxPro development software past Version 9.0, but the company will continue to support the technology through 2015.

Instead of releasing new versions of FoxPro, Microsoft will release core portions of the FoxPro software to its CodePlex community development site, said Alan Griver, a group manager within the Microsoft Visual Studio team, which leads the FoxPro team.

Microsoft will continue to support the Visual FoxPro core until 2015 with standard support through January 2010 and extended support through January 2015 via the developer tools life-cycle support plan, Microsoft officials said.

Meanwhile, some of the FoxPro-related technology can be seen in other Microsoft products such as SQL Server, Team Foundation Server and various portions of the .Net Framework, Griver said. Indeed, some observers have said they could detect a link between FoxPro and Microsofts LINQ (Language Integrated Query) technology.

Griver said the FoxPro development team will be spread out across various groups in the Microsoft Developer Division, including those working on Visual Studio—including the upcoming next major release of Visual Studio, code-named "Orcas," and beyond.

"We believe that by working with the community to continue to allow the FoxPro technology to be enhanced, that will help" developers who currently have projects written in FoxPro, Griver said.

The FoxPro community has been very active in adding functionality to the platform, building an Outlook control bar for FoxPro, support for MSBuild and a code checking tool similar to the FXCop tool that exists for Visual Studio.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been working on "Sedna," which is the code name for the project that takes advantage of enhancements in Visual FoxPro 9.0. The primary goal of Sedna is to expand on the ability of Visual FoxPro-based solutions to better integrate with other Microsoft products and technologies, such as Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and Windows Vista.