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It's no secret that FoxPro shops love FoxPro. I wrote 6 books and over
260 articles about FoxPro, and it saved my bacon many, many times.
However, back in March of 2007, Microsoft officially announced that
they would no longer enhance FoxPro. This means, among other things, that it may
not work with future operating system releases. It already conflicts with some Vista
features. If you haven't installed Service Pack 2, don't. Enough said.
There are also (dare we say it?) a few little problems with FoxPro. Index
problems, mainly. As tables grow, multiuser installations on Local Area Networks
experience performance degradation. Logging users off to reindex files is a major
struggle, and the fact that it has to be done pretty regularly is a real problem.
And anyone who has access to the network share where your tables are located has
the ability to copy the data or change it, bypassing your excellent efforts to keep
the raw data clean. You need help.
In addition, it's increasingly difficult to find skilled FoxPro developers.
Some are retiring, and new ones are few and far between. I don't know of a single
university that teaches FoxPro; most of them teach .NET languages. The handwriting
is on the wall.
But the real problem is that future operating systems may not work
and play well with FoxPro. There may come a time when upgrading to the latest Microsoft opeating system is required,
and that may be the day your company's software stops working. By rewriting your
application in .NET, you're ready for that day when it comes.
Rewriting an application sounds daunting, but in the case of a rewrite,
you've already done 70% of the work; the systems analysis that defined your business
rules. That's not going to change, and that's the heart of your applications. Furthermore,
you can redesign your software in .NET to separate these business rules from
the screens that implement them, so that future changes are relatively painless.
You never know what Microsoft's going to do in the future; but you can be ready
for it.
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