FoxPro

FoxPro was a text-based procedurally oriented programming language and database management system (DBMS), and it was 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.

For the successor system from Microsoft, see Visual FoxPro.

Cover of the FoxPro 2.6 Developer's Guide

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, as does dBase II.[1]

FoxPro was both a DBMS and a relational database management system (RDBMS), since it extensively supported multiple relationships between multiple DBF files (tables). However, it lacked transactional processing.

FoxPro was sold and supported by Microsoft after they acquired Fox Software in its entirety in 1992. 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
Extant Versions by OS
Version FP 2.0 FP 2.5 FP 2.6
MS-DOS Yes Yes Yes
Windows 3.1 to 7 Ultimate sp1 Yes Yes Yes
Macintosh Yes Yes Yes
SCO UNIX Yes Yes Yes
Linux and FreeBSD Yes Yes Yes[2]
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.

FoxPro 2 was originally built on Watcom C/C++, which used the DOS/4GW memory extender to access expanded and extended memory. It could also use almost all available RAM even if no HIMEM.SYS was loaded.

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 2.52 Mb 9 March 1994
FPM 2.6 FoxPro 2.6 for Macintosh  ? kb 1993
FPD 2.6 FoxPro 2.6 for DOS 1.83 Mb 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 488.656 kb July 1992
FPD 1.0 FoxPro 1.0 for DOS 343.200 kb November 1991

References
  1. a CP/M set released in 1982
  2. using the ibcs files from the Linux ABI on SourceForge
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