This month's letter contains information about new content online about Visual FoxPro 9.0 and Sedna, VFP added to the MSDN Feedback center, more in-depth information about Microsoft's roadmap for Visual FoxPro, plus recent content and community news. I've been keeping my blog updated recently with more up-to-date news, so the letter here contains some key information summarized from my recent blog posts.
FFC Source for VFP 9.0 SP1
As a companion to the XSource for Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP1 we released last month, this month we released the FFC Source for Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP1. This has an updated license agreement for usage, modification and distribution of the source code. Our goal is to encourage developers from the Visual FoxPro community to enhance these class libraries and distribute these enhancements to their users, or share them with the general Visual FoxPro community such as the SednaX community project.
SednaFeature Overview
The Visual FoxPro team has been working on the Sedna release and we are making great progress. As part of our on going commitment to transparency in our planning and development, we will be publishing ‘Feature Overview’ documents containing feature details of Sedna. We will also release community technology previews (CTPs) of our builds prior to a public beta release later this year. The Feature Overview documents as well as the CTPs will evolve as more and more components get defined and built. This month the VFP team is enthused to publish three of our Sedna Feature Overview documents. We will disclose additional details of our Sedna plans — such as a way for VFP developers who use Sedna to obtain many new ActiveX controls — in the coming months as we work out the specifics.
Visual FoxPro Product Line Support Lifecycles
It is not uncommon for us to be asked about Microsoft's support lifecycle for VFP. Extended support for Visual FoxPro 9.0 expires on the first day of the year 2015. You can review a filtered support lifecycle list for recent versions of Visual FoxPro on the Microsoft support product lifecycle site.
KenX Goes Live
It is common for employees at Microsoft to change positions within the company to work on a new team and take on new challenges. Ken was asked by the Windows Live team to work on their efforts in helping build a developer community for the existing and upcoming services provided by Windows Live. While the VFP team will miss Ken, we wish him well in his new position which he blogged about: From product manager to product planner. Ken wanted me to remind you all that he will still participate in VFP some related efforts and events, and that he carries a virtual card saying he is a lifetime member of the VFP community.
Who is Milind Lele?
Ijust want to take a moment to introduce myself. I am a Program Manager with Visual Studio Data (VS Data). This is the parent group of Visual FoxPro. I have been with this team for close to five years and have been working on database tools for Visual Studio and SQL Server. Last year I took over program management from Randy Brown. I worked on SP1 for Visual FoxPro 9.0 and am now focused on Sedna as well as a planned SP2 scheduled for release mid 2007. I am excited to be part of the Sedna project. The vision of interoperability plus extensibility, enabling VFP developers to expand the scope of their applications, and the philosophy of transparency, allowing developers to provide early and ongoing feedback is very inspiring. While I do not have a background in developing with Visual FoxPro like some other members of the VFP team do, I am working closely with some great external VFP developers who we are contracting to help with the Sedna project. And, Alan Griver (yag, VS Data Group Manager) along with various VFP community members have told me that it's never too late to become a Visual FoxPro expert.
Visual FoxPro related conferences in 2006
I had a great time speaking at the Southwest Fox 2005 event last October and meeting many VFP developers there, it was my first time attending a VFP event. Here are some upcoming Visual FoxPro related conferences this year in chronological order: OzFox Lite, Sydney, March 25th-26th
GLGDW, Milwaukee, April 21st-24th
Praha DevCon for Visual FoxPro, Prague, date to be determined
Advisor DevCon for Visual FoxPro, Las Vegas, August 27th-31st
Fox Forward, Atlanta, September 15th-17th
Southwest Fox, Phoenix, October 13th-16th
Frankfurt DevCon, Frankfurt, November 9th-11th
AtoutFox, Paris, November 15th-17th
Next month's letter
This was my first letter and I look forward to many more. Like Ken did, I will provide VFP developers world wide with updates on what is happening with VFP and the team within Microsoft. Next month we will release our first in a series of Sedna CTPs (Community Technical Preview) with some components of Sedna for free download and experimental use. For more frequently announced Visual FoxPro news items, refer to the VS Data team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/vsdata.
Milind Lele
VS Data Program Manager
Microsoft
E-mail: Milind.Lele@microsoft.com
Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/vsdata
http://msdn.com/vfoxpro
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