What is FoxPro – Briefing About FoxPro And It’s Successor Visual FoxPro

Introduction to FoxPro

FoxPro is a powerful application, which is a combination of text based procedural oriented coding language and Database management system. FoxPro originally designed and developed by Fox software. However, in June 1992 Fox software was acquired by Microsoft and published it’s final version of FoxPro that is FoxPro 2.6 which was continued under Visual FoxPro label.

The FoxPro is Database Management System, therefore it does not supports relationship between the tables. Users considered DBMS as it’s main shortcoming as it is lacking in transactional processing. Therefore, Microsoft included RDBMS in it’s final release Visual FoxPro.

About Visual FoxPro

Visual FoxPro is data centric application, it consist powerful data engine that can manage high volume data. To access it’s data programmer can write code.
It combines relational database with object oriented programming environment that includes some pre written classes. In addition, it offers comparatively easy working and faster than FoxProx.
Visual FoxPro is a Powerful tool that can create high performance applications such as desktop, distributed client, client/server and web database applications. It is available in version like 3.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9, etc.

Different Features Of Ms Visual FoxPro

MS visual FoxPro offers speed, flexibility and power to create next generation application. There are many features that are included in FoxPro that enables users to create and modify applications effectively.

• Fast Application Creation

  Programmer can rapidly create application with the help of builders, toolbars, visual FoxPro wizards, designers. In addition it also allows programmer to create prototypes of application using Visual FoxPro object event model.

• Powerful Object Oriented Programming

  Object oriented programming adds more power in Visual FoxPro by including inheritance, encapsulation, subclasses and polymorphism, It speeds up the process of application development by using subclassing.
  Programmer can speed up application development by using different predefined classes such as form, toolbar and page frame base class.

• Supports Multiple Developers

  Visual FoxPro allows multiple developers to simultaneously access database. If there are number of programmers working on application wants access to database then it is possible in visual Foxpro. In addition, To protect changes on source code, user can use source control application with the project manager.

• Share Data With Other Programs

  With Visual FoxPro user can interact with other applications by sharing it’s data with other programs. User can easily share data with Microsoft Word and Excel and can use objects from other application. In addition, one can control other applications using automation process.

Creating A Database In Visual FoxPro

There are many Visual FoxPro commands that will create database in it. By using these commands, one can create database table and can manipulate data from these tables. To do this user can open the Table designer to create a Visual FoxPro Table.

CREATE < File_name>

Here, File_name specifies the table name of the database. Now user can create various fields of the database.

Basic Concept Of Programming In Visual FoxPro

While writing any program in FoxPro user can store data and manipulate with the help of commands and instruction. Data and data storage containers are the most basic components of any program, programmers can access and manipulate their data with the help of different commands, functions and operators.

What are Data Containers in Visual FoxPro

FoxPro provides numbers of data containers that will help programmers to manipulate data. Data containers allows users to perform operation on multiple piece of data. Once the programmer will perform any operation on the container, it will replace he old data with the new data. It includes variables, table records and arrays.

• Data Variables

  Data types defines how data will be stored and how programmer can use it. It includes numeric, character, logical, Date and datetime.

Manipulating Data With Operators, Function And Commands

As Data Containers and Data Types are building blocks for any application, one can manipulate their data stored in them with operators, functions and commands.
The purpose of operators is to tie data variables together and with the help of commands programmer can give instruction to to perform any action on the data stored in variables and data containers.

Conclusion:

FoxPro is very powerful database development system that manages large volume of data with effective data engine. It also supports object oriented programming that help in creating various high performance desktop applications.