FoxPro
FoxPro was a text-based procedurally oriented programming language and database management system (DBMS), and it is also an object-oriented programming language, originally published by Fox Software and later by Microsoft, for MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX. The final published release of FoxPro was 2.6. Development continued under the Visual FoxPro label, which in turn was discontinued in 2007.
FoxPro was derived from FoxBase (Fox Software, Perrysburg, Ohio), which was in turn derived from dBase III (Ashton Tate) and dBase II. dBase II was the first commercial version of a database program written by Wayne Ratliff, called Vulcan, running on CP/M.
FoxPro is both a DBMS and a relational database management system (RDBMS), since it extensively supports multiple relationships between multiple DBF files (tables). However it lacks transactional processing.
After acquiring Fox Software in its entirety in 1992, FoxPro was sold and supported by Microsoft. At that time there was an active worldwide community of FoxPro users and programmers. FoxPro 2.6 for UNIX (FPU26) has even been successfully installed on Linux and FreeBSD using the Intel Binary Compatibility Standard (ibcs2) support library.
Version information
Operating system compatibility
| Version | FP 2.0 | FP 2.5 | FP 2.6 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MS-DOS | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Windows 3.1 to XP | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Macintosh | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SCO UNIX | yes | yes | Yes |
| Linux & FreeBSD | yes | yes | Yes[1] |
| Windows 2000 | No | No | Yes |
Technical aspects
FoxPro 2 included the "Rushmore" optimizing engine, which used indices to accelerate data retrieval and updating. Rushmore technology examined every data-related statement and looked for filter expressions. If one was used, it looked for an index matching the same expression.
In addition, FoxPro2 was originally built on WatCOM C++, which had its own memory extender - at that time state-of-the-art. FoxPro2 could access expanded and extended memory, using almost all available RAM (DOS). It used some interrupts in absence of the extended memory driver: if no HIMEM.SYS was loaded, FoxPro enabled that mechanism.
Version Timeline
| Version | VERSION() returns | EXE Size | EXE Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| FPW 2.6a | FoxPro 2.6a for Windows | 2,444 kb | 28 September 1994 |
| FPM 2.6a | FoxPro 2.6a for Macintosh | ? kb | August 1994 |
| FPD 2.6a | FoxPro 2.6a for DOS | 1,788 kb | August 1994 |
| FPW 2.6 | FoxPro 2.6 for Windows | 2.38 Mb | 9 March 1994. |
| FPM 2.6 | FoxPro 2.6 for Macintosh | ? kb | 1993 |
| FPD 2.6 | FoxPro 2.6 for DOS | ? kb | March 1994 |
| FPU 2.6 | FoxPro 2.6 for Unix | 2.3 Mb | 1993 |
| FPW 2.5 | FoxPro 2.5 for Windows | 1.63 Mb | January 1993 |
| FPD 2.5 | FoxPro 2.5 for DOS | 509,013 bytes | February 1993 |
| FPD 2.0 | FoxPro 2.0 for DOS | 465.86 kb | 1991 |
| FPD 1.0 | FoxPro 1.0 for DOS | ? | 1989 |
References
- ↑ using the ibcs files from the Linux ABI on SourceForge.net
External links
- History of FoxPro - Timeline
- A site devoted to the history of FoxPro
- A DOS VM (foxpro4dos.com) for running FoxPro for DOS on Windows(R) 64-bit machines
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