FoxPro 2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
FoxPro is a text-based procedurally-oriented programming language and DBMS, originally published by Fox Software and later by Microsoft, for MS-DOS, MS Windows, Apple Macintosh, and UNIX.
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.
The final published release of FoxPro was 2.6, after which the name was changed to Visual FoxPro.
Although no longer sold or supported by Microsoft, 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 and FreeBSD using the Intel Binary Compatibility Standard (ibcs2) support library.
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[edit] Version information
[edit] 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 | No | Yes | Yes |
| SCO UNIX | No | No | Yes |
| Linux & FreeBSD | No | No | Yes[1] |
| Windows 2000 | No | No | Yes |
[edit] Technical aspects
FoxPro 2 was a major breakthrough, because of its "Rushmore" optimizing engine, which consisted of using indexes 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.
[edit] 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 | ? kb | 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 |
[edit] References
- ^ using the ibcs files from the Linux ABI project at Sourceforge.
[edit] External links
- History of FoxPro - Timeline
- A site devoted to the history of FoxPro
- Virtual FoxPro User Group - Free online support resource
- Microsoft: FoxPro (old versions 1 to 2.6) Forum - Free online support resource
- FoxPro FAQs
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