Microsoft Visual FoxPro 7.0 Professional

FoxPro disproves the notion that database development and administration are black sciences, comprehensible only to specialists. This database suite demonstrates that you can do meaningful database work in an environment that can be figured out intuitively. The operative word is meaningful. FoxPro is not a friendly-but-feeble database management system you can use only to manage your recipes. Despite its friendly interface, it's a serious database tool.

The traditional way to use FoxPro is to develop a database on a server machine, then compile client applications--which rely on the freely distributable FoxPro runtime environment--to make queries against that server. That's still a good solution, but version 7.0 includes an object linking and embedding (OLE) database provider, with which you can expose FoxPro databases to non-FoxPro client applications. You can also increase your range of client compatibility by choosing to serve your data from Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Edition (MSDE), which ships with this product. Taking the MSDE path also makes future upgrades to the full version of SQL Server easier. It's straightforward to connect FoxPro databases with Internet Information Services (IIS) sites, which means FoxPro can serve as your Web site's back end. So, even though FoxPro isn't technically part of Microsoft's .NET architectural initiative, this new version is a lot more network-centric than any of its ancestors.

A lot of thought--and many years of customer feedback--have clearly gone into the design of this product. It's hard to imagine how the process of setting up a database could be made easier, since all you need to do is use simple menu commands to create a new project and populate it with databases, tables, queries, and the other elements of a useful application. To create a table, for example, you can choose to use a wizard that presents you with some typical tables--contacts, invoices, products, and so on--and the fields each kind of table typically contains. You can then choose to include in your table all or some of an example table's fields, supplement those fields with fields of your own making, and start collecting data.

The most immediately obvious new user-interface feature is IntelliSense, a longtime feature of other Microsoft products. IntelliSense will automatically complete function names and do syntactical grunt work for you as you type code. You can turn off IntelliSense, or modify its behavior, if you find it intrusive. Other interface changes include dockable windows and toolbars, and a couple of new ways to navigate around large code passages. There's also a new Object Browser tool you can use to examine and refer to the COM objects in your application's environment.

If you prefer to work with code and a command line, FoxPro has your number, as well. You can type commands and arguments that create databases, tables, relationships, views, reports, and queries, to say nothing of full-fledged business applications. The FoxPro language, like its graphical user interface, has been expanded and refined over the years. Microsoft has added more than 50 new commands, functions, and system variables to the language since its last release. Many of the more interesting ones--like XMLUPDATEGRAM() for sending database change notifications--have to do with importing and exporting data in Extensible Markup Language (XML). It's also now possible to monitor and react to events thrown by non-FoxPro COM objects.

Further improvements in FoxPro 7.0 include support for Web services (with which you can advertise your application's capabilities on a network) and Active Accessibility, which is Microsoft's set of hooks for devices and software that help handicapped people. There's also a copy of InstallShield Express included here, which enables you to create deployment packages that install the required files and make the needed settings on computers that will run your applications.

You wouldn't use FoxPro to store values for a performance-intensive software application, and it's a bit too costly to replace quick-and-dirty Access for simple database work. But for medium-size organizations that need to make it easier for people to share data, FoxPro's power and elegance promises to enable insiders to solve database problems with a minimum of outside consulting expense. --David Wall