FoxPro 2
Encyclopedia
Procedural programming
Procedural programming can sometimes be used as a synonym for imperative programming , but can also refer to a programming paradigm, derived from structured programming, based upon the concept of the procedure call...
programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
and DBMS, originally published by Fox Software and later by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, for MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
, MS Windows, Apple Macintosh, and UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
.
Although FoxPro is a Database Management System (DBMS) and it does support relationships between tables, it is not considered a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), lacking transactional processing
Transaction processing
In computer science, transaction processing is information processing that is divided into individual, indivisible operations, called transactions. Each transaction must succeed or fail as a complete unit; it cannot remain in an intermediate state...
.
The final published release of FoxPro was 2.6, after which the name was changed to Visual FoxPro
Visual FoxPro
Visual FoxPro is a data-centric object-oriented and procedural programming language produced by Microsoft. It is derived from FoxPro which was developed by Fox Software beginning in 1984. Fox Technologies merged with Microsoft in 1992, after which the software acquired further features and the...
.
Although no longer sold or supported by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, there is still an active worldwide community of FoxPro users and programmers. FoxPro 2.6 for UNIX (FPU26) has even been successfully installed on Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
using the Intel Binary Compatibility Standard (ibcs2) support library.
Operating system compatibility
| Version | FP 2.0 | FP 2.5 | FP 2.6 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MS-DOS | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Windows 3.1 to XP | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Macintosh | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SCO UNIX | No | No | Yes |
| Linux & FreeBSD | No | No | Yes |
| Windows 2000 | No | No | Yes |
Technical aspects
FoxPro 2 included "Rushmore" optimizing engine, which used indices to accelerate data retrieval and updating. Rushmore technology examined every data-related statement, and looked for filter expressions. If one was used, it looked for an index matching the same expression.In addition, FoxPro2 was originally built on WatCOM C++, which had its own memory extensor - at that time state-of-the-art. FoxPro2 could access expanded and extended memory, using almost all available RAM (DOS). It used some interrupts in absence of the extended memory driver: if no HIMEM.SYS was loaded, FoxPro enabled that mechanism.
Version Timeline
| Version | VERSION returns | EXE Size | EXE Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| FPW 2.6a | FoxPro 2.6a for Windows | 2,444 kb | 28-SEP-1994 |
| FPM 2.6a | FoxPro 2.6a for Macintosh | ? kb | August 1994 |
| FPD 2.6a | FoxPro 2.6a for DOS | 1,788 kb | August 1994 |
| FPW 2.6 | FoxPro 2.6 for Windows | 2.38 Mb | 9 March 1994 |
| FPM 2.6 | FoxPro 2.6 for Macintosh | ? kb | 1993 |
| FPD 2.6 | FoxPro 2.6 for DOS | ? kb | March 1994 |
| FPU 2.6 | FoxPro 2.6 for UNIX | 2.3 Mb | 1993 |
| FPW 2.5 | FoxPro 2.5 for Windows | 1.63 Mb | Jan. 1993 |
| FPD 2.0 | FoxPro 2.0 for DOS | 465.86 kb | 1991 |