Victor,

>If its VFP10, say its VFP10 - if its a completley new product - say so - if it's an add-on or extension to VFP9 then say so.... don't give us a bunch of mumbo-jumbo b.s. that answers fewer questions than it creates.

It's pretty plain from this sentence in the Roadmap that Sedna is neither a new version number nor an upgrade, but instead an add-on of some kind:

Sedna is currently scheduled to be released in the first half of 2007 and will require Visual FoxPro 9.0.

Evidently, VFP9 is the platform for the next few years and MS will be adding functionality to it through various hooks into the product (more xBase pieces as in the past) and obviously some kind of .NET Interop enhancements, as well as some things to work better with Longhorn.

>What's most annoying is that it's obvious that Micro$oft worded it the way they did knowing this.

Maybe they just don't want to say "it's the end of the road," because it we evidently are not at the end of the enhancements. It's pretty obvious to me now, based on Ken's comments recently and what's in the Roadmap, that there will not likely be a version named VFP10, but that future enhancements will be made to VFP9.

Here is my take on it, in advance (this was written for my June FoxTalk editorial) before I saw the Roadmap information:

What's Your Roadmap?
Two questions are on my mind today: What is Microsoft's roadmap for the future of Visual FoxPro, and what is my roadmap for professional and personal development?

Microsoft Product Manager Ken Levy recently mentioned in an online post that a "VFP Roadmap" document will be posted on the Visual FoxPro Web site on June 1, giving VFP developers more details about how Microsoft plans to enhance VFP beyond version 9.0.

While I would love to hear about a VFP 10.0 in development, I would also be happy to hear that significant new features will be added to the product through more Xbase add-ons and Service Packs. The latter is what I expect, based on Microsoft's ambiguous answers so far to questions about the "next version," their comments about continuing to enhance VFP, and the news that a Roadmap is about to be published.

I'm particularly interested in hearing about improvements in how VFP works with other technologies and whether it will be enhanced to take advantage of features in the upcoming Longhorn version of Windows.

I would like to hear more about direct ties into the .NET Framework, allowing VFP developers to easily use .NET features from inside VFP. (This is something that's been discussed previously as a possibility for the future.)

You might want to watch the Microsoft site for the Roadmap document to appear on the first of June. I'm sure I'll have more to say about it in a future editorial, after we find out just what they have in mind.

I am happy to see that enhancements to VFP will continue and will extend VFP further into working with upcoming technologies, no matter what they are called.