Hi Alex,

I just read your note to a UT member saying that I believe that VB users have to use SQL. That's not quite true, and not quite what I said. Please allow me to clarify my position.

I don't think that Microsoft favors VB because VB users have to use SQL. They don't. They can use MDBs. But the performance is so poor with large volumes of data that migration to SQL is essential. In the case of VFP, migration to SQL is not required when data tables grow. In fact, DBF access if generally faster with VFP than with SQL, especially if some sort of VFP server is used, like the one I described in the article "A FoxPro Server" on my website, www.lespinter.com.

I don't dislike SQL. In fact, in my work for clients, I use VFP and SQL exclusively. I haven't built a project using a DBF in a year. VFP with SQL is an excellent combination. But users aren't FORCED to use SQL. That, in my opinion, is the reason that Microsoft doesn't support FoxPro, and why all of us whose lives depend on the viability of FoxPro are in a panic.

So why am I making such a big deal about this? It's because Microsoft has not mentioned FoxPro in its advertising, except for a few scraps, for five years, and our careers have suffered enormously as a result. I have never, ever read an article in which anyone demonstrated that VB was better than, or even equal to, VFP, for building database applications. The very suggestion is laughable.

Yet if you read advertisements about Visual Studio, the .NET technology, and anything else that determines our future, FoxPro is specifically excluded from most of the literature. I've seen two-page ads for Visual Studio that didn't even CONTAIN the word FoxPro. I've considered using a blowup of one of them as the backdrop for my DevCon booth with a "Where's the Fox?" caption splashed across it.

I was told only a week ago by the guy who's organizing the big ASP conference in Las Vegas next year that FoxPro specifically doesn't support Microsoft's new technologies, and that it's the only language in Visual Studio that doesn't. No one at Microsoft will say one way or the other.

I've tried to get an answer to this question, to considerable personal detriment. At the Orlando DevCon, during my presentation, I offered to complete publicly against any VB programmer in the world, based on a specification that didn't unfairly favor either language, in building a typical LAN database application. No takers. Since I made that offer, I've never heard from Microsoft again, and haven't even received a Beta copy of FoxPro. So much for asking for the truth to be told.

I'd like to know why FoxPro is excluded from Visual Studio advertising. I'd like to know why Visual Studio books don't mention FoxPro. I want Microsoft to tell us what their real plans are. And even more, I'd loke to know why, precisely why, they don't just write a big article that states why VB is better than VFP for building database applications. I can't imagine a juicier target. They can't either. That's why there has been no published justification for their actions. They just changed the subject five years ago, and continue to act as if nothing happened. I want some public debate. If they're going to end our careers, I want them to justify their decision.

Another thread in one of the VB forums says something like "Why is Les so upset about something that happened five years ago?" Well, the Holocaust happened 60 years ago, and some people are still quite upset.

There's a department within NASA called NEAT - the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking office. Their job is to tell us when an asteroid is going to hit the earth and kill us all. I just wish Microsoft could be forced to do the same thing with whatever they know that they're not telling us.

Les Pinter