Converting and migrating your ancient Clipper or FoxPro program to Windows

Clipper decompiling

Clipper and FoxPro were popular DOS databases in the late 80's - early 90's.  Even now, in 2009, it is astonishing how many mission-critical Clipper and Foxpro applications are still out there.

However these DOS programs don't do well under Windows, and may not run at all on fast processors, in XP, Vista, or Windows 7, or they may have problems printing. Plus they have a text-based interface, hog processor time (which slows everything else down) and can't communicate with Windows programs. They are prehistoric.

These programs need to be converted to Windows before they stop working completely. We've converted and migrated many such programs. We can do it for you too.

Support for your existing Clipper or Foxpro application

Sometimes, you just need a few fixes to your existing program and don't want to convert to a new program. We support and can make program changes in all versions of Foxpro and Clipper. Email us for a quote.
 

Migrating Clipper and Foxpro to a new software platform

Often, the simplest, most cost-effective approach is to find a new, already written, software package for you to use, then convert your existing Clipper / Foxpro databases so they can be imported into the new system. There are numerous vertical platform applications for most businesses. We can help you find one, then convert your data.
 

Converting with Visual FoxPro and XHarbour

We can also convert Clipper and FoxPro to Windows using Visual FoxPro and xHarbour. Be aware however, that such a conversion means that large amount of your code will have been written in a now-archaic DOS style of programming.  That may not be what you want.
 

Visual FoxPro is a Microsoft product while xHarbour is an open source program with a large and active user base. 

With Visual FoxPro at least some of your original code can be used in the conversion. Thus the application does not need to be rewritten from scratch.

xHarbour will compile existing Clipper applications and turn them into a full Windows application that looks and acts like the DOS application that it is. Again, this may not be what you want. Also xHarbour probably won't work if the Clipper app used third party libraries.
 

What to do

The easiest way for us to determine what a conversion would entail is to examine the source code.  For small applications,  we can examine it at no cost. For larger applications, we may ask for a small fee, as it can take several hours. Once we've looked at the code, we will get an estimate back to you.

Email us for detailed information about what files we need to do an estimate.

Note: If your program is in Clipper, and you have lost the source code - a not uncommon occurrence -  we may be able to decompile it and restore the source code.

You've lost your Clipper source code and are panicking because you need it. We can help. Our decompiler services can often re-create the source code from the executable. 

We will decompile Clipper applications within 24 hours and email you the source code. Simply zip up the executable and email it to us.  If we can decompile it, the charge is $60. You can  pay using PayPal.  There is no charge if we can't decompile it. 

Be aware that, in most cases, the decompiled source code will have tokenized variable names, not the original variable names. This is a function of how the program was originally compiled.

Decompiling is just the start of the process, as it does not restore the code back into the original program files; it sort of scatters the code all over the place, which then needs to be re-assembled into a coherent whole.

If your program will not decompile if it is written in Clipper 5.3 or linked with certain linkers.