xBase++ from Alaska Software was started as a way to make Clipper code run in Windows as a genuine Windows app. It has morphed and changed way beyond that, with enormous added functionality, ability to link to SQL databases easily, and much more. Alaska just announced they plan to focus on the cloud first, with being the desktop being secondary.

Quoting from their email:

Internet technologies have only played a secondary role within Xbase++ until now. Although we innovated in this area, the preferred way of developing applications still was desktop or server- centered. However, the IT landscape has changed in the past few years and will continue to change in the future. We clearly see a point of time ahead of us where desktop applications will be banned for various reasons. Be it because of security or deployment considerations, or due to complex infrastructure requirements. Because IT desktop infrastructure-related costs are constantly increasing while agility keeps decreasing, there will be a point in the future where desktop applications are superseded by web and mobile applications as well as virtualized desktop applications.

Said that, Alaska Software herewith announces that it is starting the process of aligning its product development and product strategy for transforming the Xbase++ development tool into a cloud-first development platform. This alignment will also affect our plans to deliver a next-generation Visual FoxPro toolchain for the Windows desktop in such a way as that the UI experience and deployment become cloud-first

Cloud-first alignment.

Our vision from a development tool perspective is that any Xbase++, Clipper or Visual FoxPro developer should be able to publish an Xbase++ application to the cloud simply with a push of a button, and that customers can use this new application either via the web browser, a mobile device or via a public API. Additional application features, such as error and performance monitoring or log analysis, should be accessible at a central location. In fact, any Xbase++, Clipper or Visual FoxPro developer should be able to adapt the SaaS or BaaS business model with a minimum effort and this way create new streams of revenue based on existing knowledge and source code.

Visual FoxPro, a Microsoft product, can often be used to convert Clipper applications to Windows since the two products have quite a lot in common.

Clipper and Visual FoxPro emerged out of dBase in the late 1980’s. They share a common language base and have similar data file structures. This means that existing data files can often be used with little or no changes needed. Plus, at least some of the Clipper code can generally be used directly or with little modification in the FoxPro application. This greatly reduces the cost of conversion and speeds development time.

The database file structure (DBF files) in Clipper and Foxpro are virtually identical. Thus, Clipper data files can be used as is. No conversion is needed. Clipper often used FoxPro index files. If so, then the indexes can be used directly. If not, the the Clipper index files can easily be converted to the faster, more stable FoxPro index format.

FoxPro also supports non-native data formats like SQL Server and Oracle. However, this require changing how data is accessed inside the program.

While it is true that Microsoft will not be releasing future versions of Visual Foxpro, it is a robust and stable platform with a community of developers supporting it. Clipper hasn’t been updated in twenty years, yet there are still a multitude of Clipper applications still running.  Developers will be supporting Visual Foxpro years from now.