The LA Fox Developer

A Newsletter for FoxPro Application Developers in Southern California

May 1994

LA Fox President’s Column

by Chuck Williams

April User Meeting

The scheduled presentation was preceded and

followed by a long open discussion about the

outlook for FoxPro developers in light of the

growing interest in client server applications and

the apparent disinterest of the Microsoft sales

organization in FoxPro.

Microsoft as a development organization is cer-

tainly performing at championship levels, with

delivery of their promised full featured, high perfor-

mance, cross-plafform FoxPro 2.x products. And

the promise for FoxPro 3.0 is very exciting and

quite believable. So from a product standpoint we

could not be in better position. The concern is with

marketing - the primary database thrust at Mi-

crosoft customer promotion sessions such as Tech

Ed and DevCast is Access, and most of the Mi-

crosoft sales organizations have not embraced

FoxPro as part of their solution set. Our clients and

prospects are confused by the fact that Microsoft

sales people never even mention FoxPro much

less aggressively sell it, and in fact don’t seem to

know anything about it.

However, FoxPro today is a powerful product, with

which we can build applications that are useful to a

larger set of clients than ever before. We can

compete effectively with similar products now, and

the improvements coming in FoxPro 3 will further

expand the market and strengthen our competitive

position. I am delighted that Microsoft continues to

interact effectively with the developer community,

but I suspect they view the market for FoxPro as

large but bounded, without the growth potential of

other markets they are addressing - a market to

(Con't, page 2)

XPro User Group News

by Randy Unruh

LAST MEETING

The last meeting was a PowerBuilder dog and pony

show that turned into a mini-training session.

PowerSoft is genuinely interested in attracted more

developers from the Xbase community to use their

tools and their willingness to give away so much free

support points this out. As for the product itself, it is a

very object based enviomment that lends itself well to

increased productivity. As mentioned last month, it is

very popular in the corporate market. And, as every-

one knows, that’s were the money’s at (Willy Sutton

was wrong).

NEXT MEETING - FoxExpress

FoxExpress for Windows will be the subject of our next

meeting. This is a new product which most of you will

have not seen. True, we took a look at the FoxExpress

for DOS last year but the Windows product promises

lots of new functionality. As usual, a door prize and

product at reduced prices will be available.

JUNE MEETING - dBASE for WINDOWS

Borland is coming to show what they hope will be the

newly released dBASE for Windows. This will prove

interesting for all Xbasers, as dBASE is the mother of

all Xbase. It should also prove interesting for FoxPros

and Clipperheads, as it will provide a look at the

competition and will show how Xbase can become

truly OOPs.

I recently attended a one day training function for dBW

called the dBASE Spring Training. I’m under NDA, so I

can’t comment specifically about dBW. However,

some comments have been publicly made by Borland

and I can comment on the comments.

“dBASE for Windows will be truly Object Oriented”.

This appears to be

very true. You can take a look at

(Con’t, page 5)

Inside this issue

Special Announcement - Page 3

From the Pen of Ken - Page 4

Hot Off the Wire - Page 7

FoxPro Certification - Page 7

Hot Tip - Page 9