Hi,

In this month issue (oct, 2001) of brazilian's magazine "Revista do Linux" ("Linux Magazine" - http://www.revistadolinux.com.br/ ), there is an interesting article, that I would like to translate (parts of it) for your information.

TURBOCHARGING CLIPPER APPLICATIONS

....

Is xBase an Obsolete Tecnology?

"When we talk about Clipper and FoxPro, in reality we're talking about a series of development tools derived from dBase, that was the first tool to make viable rapid systems development in low cost platforms. These tools are called, colectivelly, xBase."

"The great majority of limitations of this technology are in fact limitations of the platform where they became popular, DOS. Slow processing, restricted memory utilization, restriction on number of open files, uncapability to use relational databases, network resources, or text mode operation, are not limitations of the xBase language or DBF databases."

"On the other hand, Clipper and Fox supply SQL access to DBF tables, exact decimal arithmetic and object oriented resources. Last two resources are absent or are less developed in some popular tools like Visual Basic and PHP."

"So, the availability of this technology in some other more capable platforms, like GNU/Linux and the FreeBSD, have the potencial to supply a development toolbox extremely capable. After all, we have less technologies really new in today's market, and some of the most popular, like Delphi and Visual Basic, are based in far more ancient languages than Clipper and Fox."

....

"...xBase tools like Clipper and FoxPro are far from being obsolete technologies, but are in truth some of the most powerful programming languages existing today, that can be revitalized..."

Sorry for the poor translation work I've done, but the point here is to show (gladly) that FoxPro is getting (slowly) its space in brazilian's development market. That's outstanding, because (1) it was formerlly dominated by Clipper; (2) the few people that have heard about FoxPro in Brazil, think it is some kind of downsized, obsolete, end-user oriented, version of MS Access and (3) the least likely place to find that information was in a Linux devoted publication!

Thanks for your time reading this message.

Fernando