VFP 8: A Great Tool For Data-Centric Solutions

Hi, I'm Eric Rudder, Microsoft Senior Vice President for the Developer & Platform Evangelism Division. I'd like a take a few minutes and talk to you about Visual FoxPro 8.0 and our efforts involving VFP. Microsoft has been evolving FoxPro for the past 10 years and I am very enthusiastic in telling you that we are committed to continuing to evolve Visual FoxPro as a great tool for building data-centric solutions.

I had the privilege of being the architect of Visual FoxPro 3.0 and many of the great features we brought to Fox, such as the visual class designer, the object model, and the database container. I've been involved in reviewing every version of VFP since version 2.5, and I am thrilled with all the great new features in VFP 8.

Many of the new features were taken directly from customer feedback. Beyond building stand-alone applications, VFP 8.0 greatly extends interoperability with SQL Server 2000 and Visual Studio .NET. These new capabilities include VFP cursor data integration with XML and ADO.NET.

VFP 8.0 fully supports creating and consuming .NET compatible XML Web services, allowing VFP to publish or receive any type of data from any type of system or device whether it be a mainframe, PCs, PDAs, Tablet PCs, or even wireless phones. This is especially true when using VFP with ASP.NET Web forms. ASP.NET is a great complimentary tool for Web development. The Fox OLE DB provider and XML Web services support in VFP 8.0 are great additions for .NET integration.

We love to receive input on how to make better developer tools to meet your needs. Here at Microsoft, community relations are increasingly important throughout the company. Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and I are very supportive of community efforts, and we view the FoxPro community as a great example of communities and Microsoft working together.

I encourage you to find out more about Visual FoxPro and .NET technologies on MSDN and GotDotNet.com. I look forward to hearing success stories of applications created using Visual FoxPro 8.0 combined with our other great products and technologies. Thank you.

Eric Rudder, Senior Vice President

Developer and Platform Evangelism

Microsoft

A video this message from Eric Rudder on Visual FoxPro 8.0 can be viewed and downloaded from http://gotdotnet.com/team/vfp.

VFP 8: A Great Tool For Data-Centric Solutions

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