Redmond, Washington - April 1, 2008

Microsoft announced today that it is re-constituting the Visual FoxPro team and moving forward with continuing development of its flagship database development tool. "Visual FoxPro has always been the pre-eminent tool in its market, as well as my personal favorite," said chairman Bill Gates. "When I found out it had been shelved, I sacked the people responsible and took steps to immediately restore VFP to its rightful position at the top of our suite of developer tools."

Reaction from the Visual FoxPro community was swift and positive. "We knew a mistake had been made when it was announced there would be no VFP 10," said one prominent developer. "It's gratifying to know that Microsoft has seen the light. Visual FoxPro not only enables us to create great solutions for our customers, it also drives sales of Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office, and other Microsoft products that are frequently used together in a Visual FoxPro solution."

Details about the next release of Visual FoxPro are expected to be announced shortly. A 64-bit edition is rumored to be in the works, as well as changes to the core database engine enabling it to function as a true client-server tool. "We're pulling people off other teams to make this work," said one senior Microsoft executive who asked to remain anonymous. "We have an unlimited budget and will devote whatever resources are necessary to this project."

On a related note, there were unconfirmed reports of pigs flying over the Microsoft campus this morning.

[And in case anybody still thinks this is serious, note the date on the byline. Well... We could wish, couldn't we?]