Beyond VFP 9

In the last couple of weeks I visited the Chicago, Kansas City and Atlanta FoxPro User Groups. I had a great time and learned a number of things on these trips. One of the common questions I was asked on these trips is my thoughts about the future of VFP and what Microsoft might announce in June. As you may know, I am not a fan of speculation on what the Fox Team might do in the future (see my post VFP X, take a look at VFP 9 first) and would rather discuss what I would like to see added to the product. Debate like this is healthy and offers Microsoft ideas on what they should consider in the next version of VFP, speculation is unproductive.

In case you have not seen the post on Ken Levy's Weblog (or Andrew's, or Craig's), Ken has announced he is releasing the Visual FoxPro Roadmap, which will disclose how Microsoft plans to enhance VFP past version 9. So instead of speculating, read this blog entry and wait for Ken's full announcement on June 1st (also announced in this blog) when he releases the Visual FoxPro Roadmap and questions and answers on the VFP Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page. The following quote from Ken's post seems to reveal an overview of what we can expect to read in a few days:

"There are many things we can and will do for enhancing Visual FoxPro to interop more and more with the Microsoft .NET platform. In fact, our plans for enhancing Visual FoxPro for .NET interop is our primary goal for enhancing Visual FoxPro going forward. We will also enhancing functionality for Visual FoxPro reports, productivity, and other areas that have nothing to do with .NET (VFP stand-alone). We want to focus on having Visual FoxPro leverage as much as possible integrated into the .NET platform using COM interop."

He also blogged about a Visual FoxPro Service Pack 1 later this year. So keep using VFP 9 and reporting any issues you find so the Fox Team can squash the bugs in Service Pack 1!