Don't bother to replace your FoxPro database

Doing nothing is one option but only if you make a conscious decision to do nothing. You do have plenty of alternatives open to you - dotNet, Linq, Access, SQL Server to mention but a few - ignoring the problem is not an option.

We have clients who are still using MS-DOS versions of FoxPro from the early 90's. These programs have been running for fifteen years and their users see no reason to change them. These DOS versions of FoxPro have been out of Microsoft support for very nearly as long but that has not stopped the programs working. The only problems that the users have is that they are having to downgrade any new computers from Vista. Not that they have to buy new computers very often. These programs run very quickly indeed on a 486 computer under Windows 95.

Doing nothing is an attractive proposition if you are sure that you will continue to have access to the skills that will occassionally be needed. Once in a while one of our DOS customers will suffer a problem with file corruption. It's easy enough for us to recover the data but FoxPro skills are going to become more and more rare over the next ten years so you do need to be sure of your support. We have no plans to stop our support for FoxPro databases so call us if you're a UK Fox user.

Realistically then, doing nothing is only an option for a small company, or for a small division within a larger company who can keep a couple of computers dedicated to their current FoxPro system. A VFP 9 system should run reliably for at least the next ten years.

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