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The Universal Thread Visual FoxPro Community Survey has gathered up to date data in regards to Visual FoxPro developers. The survey was initially released on April 4th, 2002. It ran until April 25th, 2002.

Some of the questions were related to the community and their thoughts about how it contributed to the Visual FoxPro product as well as in regards to the Universal Thread. Without any surprise, nearly 80% confirmed than they believe that the present state of Visual FoxPro is related to its community. It's no secret now in the developers' world how successful the Visual FoxPro community has been over the years. With a strong voice combined with ongoing requests to enhance the product, this community has shown its determination to have Visual FoxPro succeed over the years and for the upcoming ones.

About 66% confirmed that they believe the Universal Thread saved or contributed greatly to save the product. That shows how important the role of the Universal Thread is perceived from the community in regards to the product. Knowing that the Universal Thread has worked a lot with Microsoft in the last two years to enhance its product and to respond to some of their needs, it certainly is focused to continue in that direction in order to better respond to the community's needs.

As for the future of Visual FoxPro, the community seems to toward its decision to say that the community and Microsoft marketing will be, at an equal stage, the key features for its upcoming evolution.

As for where the Visual FoxPro developers see themselves in 5 years, an impressive result of 90% believe they'll still be involved in Visual FoxPro, mostly, or combined with other development tools. The community do believe in an ongoing continuous long term evolution of the product. Well said!

In one of our key questions, we asked the community what they would do if they were given a large amount of money to promote the product. Some key points to note about the results:

• Strong request to increase the marketing on non VFP magazines, tech journals (ads, success stories, case studies)
• Evangelism of educational facilities to teach VFP (Universities, Colleges)
• Evangelism of CEO, corporate IT managers, MIS managers (massive mailings, brochures)
• Strong presence in non VFP events (booths, keynotes, training sessions)
• Promotion on telling the world how excellent it is, if not the best, front-end to SQL Server
• Show more on how it integrates on .NET
• Increase presence at DevDays, Tech Ed, PDC
• Create demo CDs and broadcast it all around
• Start from the inside - more education on non VFP staff employees at Microsoft

• To be better informed on what is going on behind the scene
• Increase presence to answer key questions
• A well structured implementation on actual bugs/fixes on ongoing feedback
• More regular comments from Ken and key persons from the team
• Better integration with MS VFP KB and help file
• Provide feedback on Toledo Wish List
• More involved with the Universal Thread
• Make the UT well known as a premier medium of support
• Use UT as an example (showcase) about a success story about VFP and Internet
• Regular reports on UT from Ken, such as YAG is doing for .NET
• More interactive with UT members (more presences, organize chat on UT servers, etc.)

Probably, one of the most interesting is result is the confirmation or 95% of the community that they'll upgrade to the next version of Visual FoxPro once released.

As for existing Visual FoxPro versions the community is using, 99% are using version 6 and up.

The present state of VFP is greatly related to:
The Visual FoxPro community	233	78.19%
Microsoft marketing	65	21.81%
I do not have an opinion	10
Other	6
Total	314

How would you qualify the role of the Universal Thread in regards to the current state of Visual FoxPro?
It saved the product!	12	4.24%
It contributed greatly to save the product!	175	61.84%
It helped but that didn't change that much	93	32.86%
It didn't help at all	3	1.06%
I do not have an opinion	31
Total	314

The future of VFP is in the hands of:
The Visual FoxPro community	126	42.28%
Microsoft marketing	134	44.97%
Microsoft product support	35	11.74%
Technical support on the Web	3	1.01%
I do not have an opinion	5
Other	11
Total	314

The future of VFP is out of US/Canada - the rest of the world will drive its expansion.
True	69	33.99%
False	134	66.01%
I do not have an opinion	111
Total	314

Which aspect of VFP need to be improved, in your opinion:
Other languages compatibility (Structure, Strong typing…)	163	51.91%
Graphic user interface (End user GUI, Windows controls…)	151	48.09%
Interoperability with other databases (ADO, SQL Server data types…)	165	52.55%
Beginners support (Wizards, Samples, Documentation…)	88	28.03%
Core language elements (More functions, Commands, SQL clauses…)	103	32.80%
Web integration (XML, Web services… )	187	59.55%

Which scenario best describe where you see yourself in 5 years:
Visual FoxPro developer	60	19.93%
Visual FoxPro + .NET (C# and/or VB .NET) developer	166	55.15%
Visual FoxPro + other Windows tools developer (Delphi, Java...)	43	14.29%
.NET (C# and/or VB .NET) developer	23	7.64%
Other Windows tools developer (Delphi, Java…)	3	1.00%
Other platform developer (Linux, Mac, Unix…)	6	1.99%
Other	13
Total	314

Assuming Microsoft would give you a large budget to promote VFP, how would you spend it?

Educate businesses on what VFP is all about and convince them that it's a viable platform. There has been to much misinformation out there. This would have to be corrected. Ads on the main magazines, strong presence on conferences, quick start training kits, samples, and so on. Spend money creating extrordinary applications and promote those. Examples: polling systems that can handle millions of poll takers, bug databases, documentation systems buy hardware Encourage educational facilities to teach VFP Team of evangelizers within MSDN events and communities all around the world. Ask what everyone else would do if they got a larg budget to promote vfp. Training newbies Demistify people who are brainwashed into thinking that VB (or Access) + SQL server is the only real solution. Promote VFP in colleges and universites as a cheap tool to learn database design, SQL and application development. Have an educational version that would make it very cheap for them and for the students. This would help to get new young people using the product and would make the community grow Product promotion to Corporate IT Managers. Integration with .NET Get the schools to teach it. The students will graduate and the employers will use it because the new labor pool. I know of several companies that dropped VFP because they could not hire programmers. VB programmers are a dime a dozen. Showing the compatibility with Clipper and the power of VFP like acess all kind of data, dbc events (free database) and so on... Magazine advertising and sending VFP evengelists to VB/ .NET/ SQL server conferences. I would simply make sure that VFP is included in ALL Microsoft discussion about development tools at conferences and in print advertising. 1. Promotion 2. Upsize the product to an all in one enterprise solution. Marketing + Presentation of the product to developers of other languages showing what VFP can do. Distribute CD's with samples and how do almost all with VFP for developers outside VFP community. Advertising to both, managers and technical people, that there is a whole set of applications that are better served by a data-oriented product than by a general purpose set of tools like .NET. More Pub. Marketing 101 - Find users who would benefit from it's features, and push it to them. Perhaps corporate CIO's for internal development. I'm not a marketing guru (that's why I write code for a living). However, I'd like to see a mailing to IT managers, to help change their mind about "VFP is old tech/ailing/legacy/dead." Something about 1-2 pages (that's their entire attention span), glitzy/flashy, selling the hot features of VFP and how it complements .NET, SQL Server, etc. Have a link to a website that explains more (with the Steve Ballmer video, etc), and register to get some *useful* freebie (maybe a poster of how to use Web Services, .NET or some other buzzword with a definite VFP slant, but useful to *any* language, so it gets hung up). I would market it to medium to large businesses promoting its strength and flexibility. We, as developers, know it's strengths, but it seems our voices need the support of the creator. To make the public aware of the power of VFP. Try to introduce VFP in the University Syllabus. Will organize seminars on VFP and its power. Will give some special offers on these events. Will create some powerfull Web and Mobile Applications(using VFP) and demonstrate that in these events. Distribute VFP and MSDN in our country and close countries, create a Russian WEB site to support VFP and improve VFP community in post-USSR countries and other slovenian countries. In addition, translating a lot of articles and books to Russian languages. Show in his Webs sites all It can make with VB.NET I can do make with VFP, and large app people use VB+SQL Server or VB+Access It can do with VFP standalone. Des campagnes de publicité dans la presse associées aux success stories serait un élément plus que suffisant pour remettre VFP sur les rails. Aujourd'hui hormi .Net VFP est la seule alternative proposée par Microsoft, il faut qu'il communique dessus en expliquant bien la place de VFP entre Access et SQL Server. It would use to promote events, training, reviewed competitions and marketing in the main ones of computer science of the world in diverse languages I would spend money on advertising VFP as the language to use for Data. I would accent the benifits of Rushmore Technology. I would use the money to give a complementary copy of VFP away at User Group meetings. I would have product demos showing how much easier it is to build forms with VFP than it is with other languages. Vacation. I would give VFP a strong tie in to .NET. I would also not be so exclusionary throughout the MSDN areas of MS.com. It can be hard to find info without having to look for hoops to jump through. High profile compaigns - targeting companies that should be using VFP, but aren't because they don't know it exists (companies that use EXCEL/ACCESS as their database, when a VFP app would do the same job.). Educating MS people about VFP. There is a lot written about MS SQLSvr and Access, but not much on VFP. Offer VFP as an alternative to SQLSvr or Oracle etc when a company has a budgetry constraint on cost of ownership. More advertising in other programing language magazines/journals including MSDN. Business solutions examples articles. I will ask Bill gates to demonstrate the power of Visual Foxpro and put that video in all microsoft website,for a month. Well... will hire all VFP professionals around the world to make VFP (sorry for the slang) "kick-ass" tool for application development. I mean - better support of ActiveX interfaces (for legacy applications) VFP CLR (for dotNet applications) better and true strong-typing... other (your suggestion?) Show a presence at non FoxPro conferences and advertise in non FoxPro magazines so the "FoxPro" name is put in front of a large number of people! Will try to persuade CEO of bigger companies that this is the right tool for their profesioanlly done IS combining with SQLServer and Win NT. Advertising in non Foxpro programming magazines i have no idea Marketing of VFP Make it known that VFP is a viable, reliable, scaleable and worthwhile development solution that should be considered at any level, including the enterprise n-tier. I´ll make conferences all arround the world. In Argentina in a two days DEV DAYS conference only one hour is devoted to VFP. And I´ll select the best VFP applicattions and I´ll promote and sell or rent them. Documentation like flyers, mailers, other media to get the word out. Just flood the market with case studies demonstrating the power and flexibility of VFP. Pursue opinion leaders including press and Gartner and let them know about MS' hidden jewel. Not occasionally - you have to beat the drum constantly, or it looks like you don't love the product. Mexico it´s a place of VB (Access) guys. But Access asks a big pc for a big table. VFP allows to manage a lot of records in minutes, without a expensive PC (I cross a 4 million reccords versus a 5 million record in 45 minutes looking for coincidence, Pentium PC... not bad uh?) But unfortunatelly, not everybody knows that. I´ll use the money to promote specifically the ligth-weigth and speed of VFP Databases, as central point. 1.- Marketing. 2.- More integration with .NET. Add some VFP sessions to MSDN Developer Care activities. Putting adds in the major magazines read by CTO and IT management types. More about how to best use VFP with the VS .NET tools. No opinion. Use examples of great applications written in Visual FoxPro to promote it. Money spent promoting VFP would be better spent improving the product - a decent product these days (the Internet Age) can sell itself. VFP does not need 'hype'. Any 'promoting' should focus on correcting the Microsoft internal erronius beliefs about VFP. Promote in University/school mainly. Vast improvements in documentation, inclusion of a sub-set of VFP into the CLR facility, and extensive marketing in NON-VFP arenas INCLUDING to business decision-makers. I'd do four tiered marketing and advertising and improve the product dramatically to help support the enhanced marketing. 1. Ads focusing on CIO's to tout it's data handling and interface capabilities with large databases. 2. Ads focusing on the small/midsize business market to let them know it can be a single product solution. 3. Develop more tools and solutions in-house and add space on Microsoft's sites for third party solutions that can help pull old style FoxPro developers into the fold. Also provide consultant space and/or job market information on Microsoft's sites devoted to helping put together potential clients/employer's with developers. 4. Advertise in non-Microsoft oriented magazine hoping to pull in developers using Delphi, Java, etc. The percentage of the budget would be: 1. 20% 2. 25% 3. 30% 4. 10% With 15% for product improvement over it's normal development budget. Actually promote it not just show pictures of the box occationally. My FoxPro applictations consistantly out proform other apps but I have to constantly fight the "it's a dieing language" / "hasn't that been replaced by Access?" arguments. Better education to the market for the strengths of Foxpro. mags - I would promote the product with its strength in data manipulation. Information systems are about data. With VFP, you can handle the data so easily. Get some marketers who believe in the product Modify it and bundle it with SQL Server in same way Oracle has their development/forms tool. That would be the way to save VFP. Contact CEO's etc to publicize the power of VFP and benefit to their companies. Java training. Booths at major programming conferences Ads in major programming magazines Free product to major programming shops Marketing strategies, events about .NET AND VFP, greater appearence on MSDN site. Demonstrate real world applications of VFP including middle-tier business COM objects. Show others what VFP can do in other technical articles besides Fox magazines. Code magazine is a prime example where VFP is mixed amoung the technologies to show developers that VFP does have a place in technology. Designing a strategy that clearly positions VFP within the other MS tools, and making sure it is stated everywhere around MS staff and literature, and not just in VFP sites, groups or magazines. I don't think it would take a large bugdet, but a political decision. Te main point is targeting VFP in a way that doesn't compete, but complements, other products, without just ignoring it (what mostrly happens now). The only way I see to promote it would be to open it up, i.e. allow the language to SEAMLESSLY integrate with the Windows API, even more specifically, build in the ability to define customs data types as TYPEDEFs. The lack of the ability to define custom data types limits Foxpro's ability to completely integrate with the underlying OS and API. Adding this would be better than trying to promote other features. I'd donate licenses and instruction to colleges. I'd advertise what a greate licensing value it is. In school because in Quebec city (canada) lot of new programer never heard about VFP. All they eard is VB. and SQL server. Not just student but teacher too. In buisness to tell them they can build solid app for there client with or with out SQl . I have see some buisnes swicht to FiveWin For there migration of clipper app instead of Vfp what a mistake. Help building more formation cours or product in french .... and the list can be long.... Promote it as a premier tool to use with SQL Server. Corporate adverstising. Small business advertising. Aim it at small company needs. Advertise it not for enterprise Fortune 500 solutions but at the smaller companies as a RAD tool. Marketing to Businesses, Large and Small, for all it's features. Promoting it on college campuses. In showcases, telling all that can be done with VFP, publishing ads in the most popular magazines. I feel that I would be giving free seminars on VFP for university students. No opinion More on making it .Net enabled and less on promotion. On showing great existing applicatons to the world and on showing how modern and fast VFP is. Invest it in tomorrows programmers and target Universities and colledges. Maketing Books, documentation, manuals as it is done with VB Educating Microsoft's own (non VFP) marketing staff as well as corporate America (i.e. CIO's. It managers, management in general, etc.) Improving its overall image in the IT and developer community, so that it is no longer viewed as merely a legacy support tool. Get articles published in major magizines that are not specific to VFP. Case studies that demonstrate the use of VFP in the fortune 500. Target MIS directors for fortune 500 and get VFP in front of them. Generate a VFP Buz. I would spend the budget on beginners advertising, provide VFP more as new tool, rather then a tool to switch too. Give it the abillity to complie to the CLR. Give it native support for SQL server (i.e. something like SET ENGINE TO SQL-SERVER; SET DATABASE TO northwind; SELECT table 1; SCAN; etc). When you have these features: Market them heavily. 1.- Sending to TI managers comparative tables for proyects develop time with vfoxpro + frameworks and other developer tools 2.- Sending VFP Posters to Schools. DevDays promoting the stability of a proven, time tested development environment for immediate use. The small business alternative (read less expensive servers and hardware management) to the more complex web, client server enviroment. With 100m bit networks file server technologies are still viable. Less complex development -- major horsepower. Many major and smaller businesses run their accounting, billing and payables - plus crm and datawarehousing on systems with less than 50 to 100 users. Lower hardware cost make powerful systems with in the reach of many small organizations. The database backend that competes with more expensive client server systems that are overkill for many applications. Client server done right requires a skilled DBA - who is out of the reach of many small to medium size businesses. Make VFP More like .NET. I use WWC and the ability to use DCOM is very important to me upgrading VFP to support better remoting is very important to me. - to improve compability with Internet and make compability with COM objects like VB (and that ASP understand FoxPro native command). - advertisment under device - FoxPro all in one package for middle size application - cheap and cool! Introducing VFP as an additional IIS scripting language (see Active FoxPro Pages) usable for WebParts on Dashboards an so on (making it visible to the world) in combination with Introducing VFP as an alternative to MySQL - forming an alternative for PHP/mySQL-users. Re-Activating Active Documents as a "WebForm" way with a one-time-downloadable (not Common) Language Runtime as NOW Active Documents make sense in connection with WebServices and XML. Overall: Optimize VFP for local VFP apps exchanging data with backend VFP webservices generated out of the same project file. OK, integration of SQL-Server for VFP 8.0 is a good idea. Integrate with .NET Reduce the price to increase the market share Conferences outside of US, promotion of programers to write standard applications (some like opensource) to convince the comunity that the apps can be done. Some ads in other developers magazines Porguese Version It's not about promotion, it's about integration with other MS products, e.g. .Net convince Bill Gates to develop several applications in VFP and then present them on TV. Spend it all demeaning other languages :) Push the product in colleges and invest in co'op advertising of training companies. The product should be mentioned prominently in msdn magazine and probably have nationwide launch events sponsored by Microsoft (similar to the .net events). Regular advertising alone, which is what the community keeps asking for, will do nothing or at best not much. Alex Wieder No comment. Marketing. To spread the name "Visual FoxPro" all around! Training Microsoft UK staff in VFP. Marketing Training programs for Undergraduate and Graduates to take on VFP in a live environment throughout the UK. Training should give beginners a full overview of how VFP can be used to provide middle tier solutions and full software solutions for most real world situations. The tranee's would benefit by enterring the work place armed with knowledge of what i consider to be the most powerful tool in today's industry for developing Client Server business solutions. The community would benefit by an influx of new blood. VFP would benefit by the recognition it would gain in teh UK workplace, far too often have I heard of UK industries using Visual Basic with an Access back end... or the long development timelines for VB/SQL solutions where VFP/SQL solutions could be developed a lot quicker. In my opinion. On learning C# and .NET. Microsoft has made it clear where the future is and VFP isn't in it, if you work on a Windows platform. The name of the game is name recognition. Our clients simply DO NOT want a VFP product and will pull business if we stay with it. Too bad, I prefer XBase data access over the crappy, mind-numbing client server stuff anyday. I'd create a core of great developers and have them build high-visibility complex data apps. Then, I'd have those apps covered in every business medium I could find. Marketing VFP as a desktop application alternative to .NET and VB for small and medium business and business systems. .NET is a very impressive and can be a solution for most future systems but it can't be everything. Especially in a resource limited or in high RAD situations. VB as an applciation is not oop nor is it "robust" enough to handle business applications as can VFP. They could try mentioning it once or twice in magazine write ups, instead of ignoring it. Whenever you go on there web site they always mention every other language except Visual Foxpro when it comes to integration with other software. Good question. I was disappointed to no longer see VFP at the SQL Server/VB devcons that DevConnections put on. I like to see VFP more closely aligned with SQL, so I suppose I'd put my money into that aspect more than anything. Visibility at SQL conferences and in SQL magazines, etc... I'd also like to see more case studies. There are some fantastic apps out there that show off the product, but they don't have much visibility. I would spend it by making VFP more stable (clear of hitches) to the level of FP for DOS. More magazine ads in mainstream tech journals. Greater web presence on microsoft.com. Start talking about how other products can work with VFP, not the other way around!!! Major magazines that corporate executives could see - messages from Bill Gates on what a fabulous product VFP is. Get togather with VFP MVP and maybe even to an extent the VFP community. Decide exactly and clearly where VFP is going to "fit" as far as a development tool, then pour money into insuring that all developers ( not just VFP ) know this, insure that management level people of all companies know this ( through business publications like the WSJ ). Also pour money into the MS VFP team such that they deliver, without question, upon this future vision of the product. This was a wish list right? Define large. * A 'subscription free' microsoft newsletter/e-zine with some of the following content: 1) Developer tool features and ads. 2) 'SHOWCASING' fortune 500 applications that were rolled out in VFP. (reprints on request) 3) Local User Group announcements, community interest, etc. 4) Inside looks/tutorials by M.S. developers. * Marketing effort aimed at the non-developer corporate decision makers would not be amiss. Many a product has been sold by madison avenue without any technical merit or advanatge. Think how well VFP would do with the technique. * The biggest hurdle to overcome both within the developer community and the end user community is the strong perception that VFP has no long term commitment from Microsoft. Removing VFP from Visual Studio did little to alter that perception. * Some things money can not buy! Frequent reassuring statements about VFP's 'future plans' and inclusion of VFP when discussing 'Microsoft' solutions would do more for the products continued growth than any amount of money at this time. Send out a time limited VFP7 demos, which includes a CDROM interactive tutorial and some high quality sample apps, to at least 100,000 major corporations in the Western Hemisphere. Improving VFP, not advertising it. Once it has improved more, have it reviewed in as many developer places as possible, then work on the reviewers misgivings Educate MS employees about their own product Market the VFP product the way the VB/WinOS guys did. I don't think that a large budget is required. I'm not expecting ads in major magazines. Rather, if MS would consistently mention VFP on their presentations, marketing material, web pages, etc. it would already help a lot. I believe one of the major problems is that VFP is not very well known outside of the VFP community. Many IT decision makers think the product no longer exists, is obsolete, in maintenance mode, etc. If VFP were mentioned more often by MS then it would be much easier for the VFP community to sell their projects/products and to help MS promote VFP. Market & promote VFP as a viable product across the globe - Im in Australia & most people never heard of VFP! I am not sure the following is answering the question or not, but there are my opnion on promoting VFP. 1. Try to have more conference not only in US, but also other countries in Asia. 2. Try to make the words "VISUAL FOXPRO" appear more times in forum such as MSDN conference. Of course, if Bill Gate attend to VFP conference and speak.. sure it is more effective. 3. Why I can not find MCSD course or exam for VFP in other countries such as Malaysia?? Why don;t MS persue intitute to have such training and exam even though not much developers are using it at this moment. 4. Launching of VFP for new future held in other countries as well. 5. Advertising VFP just as .NET or VB, with sending out some letters and etc to prove that MS will support VFP in future. First,Upgrade VFP more to be competetive in .NET world. Second, propaganda at major IT magzine Third, support university to have a VFP course. advertising events Market VFP as the best product for middle size database application development in the enterprise and the best product for database applications for small to mid-size businesses I don't have any marketing experience, so I don't feel I could andwer this question. I would present VFP as a Business Solution package via media advertising. Advertising in other trade, executive, and airline publications. And it if it was really large at next years Super Bowl. Students, Students, Students! Mailings showing the advantages of VFP to .NET developers, ads in database magazines, and sample applications included with other Microsoft programming languages. 1. Educate MS sales/support staff on capabilities of VFP and those situations in which it provdides the best solution to system development. 2. Publicize the above information to Corporate IT decision makers 3. Build a series of training courses for the novice developer to become at least mildly productive in VFP 4. Develop a curiculum suitable for a community college on developing database applications using VFP. If possible, a second course providing more depth. I would send people like Ken Levy, Calvin Hsia, and Randy Brown to professional conferences like Tech Ed and Professional Developers Conference, not for individual sessions, but to participate in keynotes and bonus evening sessions. Spreading the word outside of the VFP community. I would also advertize in other development tool magazines. Why? Recently I got a direct marketing email (spam) on an updated PowerBuilder. Frankly I thought that this product was dead, have not heard about it in years. The same could be going on with VFP in developers eyes. By coming out of the little VFP community and go around the globe with the product because VFP is very powerfull but needs to be demonstrated so we can convince other people. Produce more technical information about VFP. Ads in magazines targeted toward managment types. Print ads in CIO and other mainstream magazines 1) Hire product evangelists 2) Instruct employees to support and recommend its use where appropriate. improving the report writer Have all the sales guys from M$ learn what VFP can do, and have them lose some money if they don't try their best to sell it. I would better define the role of VFP in a .NET world, and market those strengths to ALL developers. I would include more examples of how VFP and .NET can work together. I would spread the message to all developers. Imagine showing off VFP at a .NET conference. With 2-3 day workshops: presenting the product and presenting great (big) VFP projects. Announcing it as the best data centered tool, best suited for GUI and middle tier (business logic, COM and COM+ components) programming. In training Visual Foxpro and demonstraning the abilities of this product. Make the product better known, because an unknown product will not be bought by new users. I often have to explain the power of vfp to colleagues who are struggeling with other db products. They thing that vfp is history or is insufficient for their needs. (if they ever heard about vfp...) Provide free examples of foxpro's speed and flexability I don't know Yes a larger budget to promote it. Spend it more on enhancing its feature and advertise, market to the whole world that VFP is the best in developing Database application Advertise via media targeted at other developer languages (i.e., VB, C++, etc.) to point out the benefits of the integrated database features in VFP. Focus on how VFP fits into n-tier development and within the coming .NET world. Showcasing of real-world applications. Serious use of VFP in-house, (this will never happen, of course). Revival of a Unix/Linux/Mac versions. Market VFP as a single point of contact - 1 product for all 3 tiers without the licensing costs. television commercials/msft website/developer websites/amazon.com Interface to .Net, more advertising and case scenarios to demonstrate when Fox does it better Marketing Hiring an extremely clever ad agency. Create a contact list of each vendor with a shink-wrapped VFP product, create a brochure that shows the solutions category of VFP products (this would be a BIG expensive brouchure since there are K's of VFP products. 1. Make clear marketing about VFP according to .NET 2. Find a way to get this news into the big companies 3. More cheap education for VFP developers (OO, UML...) 4. Try every way that help to let companies know what VFP is I would make the symbol of the Fox synonymous with programming power. Better promotion to end users and managers More advertising in "management" type magazines Touting it as the Swiss army knife IT tool. Quick SQL reports to Web Services. I have no idea a big new house I would select several companies and provide them with the training and advisory personnel to help them discover for themselves the potential and value of VFP for their data-centric applications. I'm not talking about huge multi-national corporations but for the thousands of mid-sized businesses where there is a demand for a development tool like VFP. Many of these companies do not even require a large back-end database. It seems that Microsoft devotes a lot of attention wooing and trying to position itself as another Oracle. Most companies do not need Oracle or SQL Server for that matter. That is the market I work in and I believe it would be very fertile ground to target. Making foxpro more robust. Support for structures, etc. Make it a real language. one half to marketing one half to make VFP more stable and error free Business management articles/advertising Professional IT advertising Recruitment of newbies Making a VFP runtime for LINUX Marketing to corporate IS managers to reduce the pro-SQL bias for projects where VFP can handle it. Attracting Fortune 1000 companies Sponcering competitions (both timed and untimed meeting of a spec) "Creating" news showing VFP as an IT saviour Develop better marketing strategy to highlight the power and flexibility of VFP for data intensive applications and other VFP strong points, to dispell rumors of the imminent demise of VFP, and to build end user confidence in VFP as an effective long term solution platform. Spend more on improving integration with emerging technology and software applications. With the large, highly skilled developer base, more effort should be made to address concerns of the VFP community. On development. A good product will promote itself. I would show what VFP can do in today's (okay tomorrows) .NET world Make an easier learning curve to use it for users not familiar with database concepts. Make the wizards cumulative and progressive from simple actions to more difficult ones. Offer more code examples than Tasmanian Traders. People learn by seeing the code and where it is put. I would publish Microsoft Press books about VFP just like they do for all their other products and languages. This would do much to legitimize VFP. I would also update the MCSD Exams to include VFP 8 when released. More advertising in IT magazines, and whatever else Ken Levy thinks would be useful. In the corporate arena. VFP is not a 'toy' like other MS products which are being promoted as 'Industrial strength." MS should be more honest and open about the true values of their DB products. By killing VB and replacing it by VFP Ad space in the major mags. Include FoxPro whenever they do their release parties. Inclusion of FoxPro when MS makes sales pitches. Educate their marketing team about Foxpro. Endorse FoxPro as a valuable abd stable development tool. Promote Foxpro as MS releated user groups. Ads (tv,newspaper) promoting solutions like the chunnel. Make sure that everywhere Access is mentioned VFP is mentioned too. Revise all Microsoft documentation and books to show VFP does exist. Clarify the differences between Access and VFP for the "regular" users. I would promote it as a database tool that can replace Access on the desktop and SQL Server for a lot of mid-sized case. Of course, MS would never allow that type of marketing no matter how much money marketers were given...marketing money doesn't matter for VFP's long-term success, in my opinion. Case studies of web service integration and local rich front-end implementations

How would you like to see the presence (support) of the VFP team on UT?
More active	156	57.78%
Same as today	114	42.22%
I do not have an opinion	44
Total	314

What would you like Microsoft Visual FoxPro team to do in regards to the Universal Thread - in regards to improvments, its support, etc.?

Some apprearance in the newsgroups/vfp sites Let us know what they're doing for the VFP community. Inform us of cool places to see on the net. Tell us where to get source code, white papers... Not only white papers that were made by MS but anything interesting made by VFP developers. Besides the presence and support we´ve had months ago, there must be some MS employee who knows VFP in-depht, to help the community better understand the product, discover and fix bugs, etc. provide more responses I would like the official knoweldge base to be mirrored here, with a complete and thorugh bug list. I'd like official comments on the wish list item. Jump in more freely when a thread borders on a feature a function or a bug Nothing Better info for beginners, How to get started, simplifying common tasks Give it more publicity in any number of ways. Yes. They should join in NA I think they do plenty as it is. More regular comments from Ken, Ricardo, Randy about what is happening with the product. 1) More real world source code example of how to take advantage of all of VFP features. Maybe a update version of Tastrade. One of the biggest problem is the poor Help that comes with VFP. Beginners that come from clipper are most of the time lost, the reason is changing from procedural programation to OO programation. I havent seen samples in VFP to show them how to do it. I say this because I'm teaching some guys form Clipper to VFP 7.0. I also would like to se a better help for Active X, COM and more samples with VFP not VB. More active on UT I like seeing a Microsoft presence on the UT, that's for sure! However, I don't feel they HAVE to support any third-party avenues of support--for VFP or any of their products. Links from their web pages would be nice, and letting their support people hang out here is great. Anything else is icing on the cake. Being a relatively new member, I can't speak with any real experience, but I would like to have some sort of regular feed back from an authority at Microsoft relating to our queries. I sense that there is a big void out there where occasionally a voice is heard. Perhaps a dedicated forum strictly for Microsoft feedback on what is happening with our questions/suggestions and what is the 'real' scoop relating to the future of VFP. There are few bugs in VFP 7.0 even after installing SP1. I would like the team to take care of these things and release the service pack 2.0 by fixing all these bugs. I can present the details of these bugs on request. Improve integration related to Knowledge base articles, technical articles and Wishes list. Just more open communication, yet too many things are covered by NDA. improvments Faire en sorte que l'équipe de développement communique davantage après d'UT, le projet TOLEDO et la liste des doléances est un bon départ. To create, from time to time documentation on "good practical" in VFP I would like to see more VFP Code demos on MSDN. No opinion. There has been increased presence in the last year. This has been beneficial and should be continued. to post more demo on a complete system like client sever,web apps,standalone product,so new users can make that a starting point maybe to give feedback on toledo wish list... and to look through all messages for VFP7 issues - and to fix them in SPx for VFP7 To take more care about send code for improvements. To look better in wish lists and to improve faster tools. Become active. Stay that way It is more of a decision of MS to loosen the policy, but allow the team open up a little bit more and discuss what enhancements and bugs are being worked on/considered for each release, service pack, etc. I´d like MS express opinions about ours Toledo´s whishes and to interact with the developer team Hold more chats - real time conversations type stuff. Nothing. They should spend their time on the product. As a second tier offering, it must be awesome to get much attention. The UI programming in VFP still requires a lot of work-arounds. It will not win the love of new developers if (when) they trip on UI landmines. More chats and online conferences... Remember, UNIVERSAL Thread, not only for USA and Canada guys... No opinion. tighter cooperation I think their current activity (regular/occasional monitoring of messages) is sufficient. Even if only occasional, the presence of VFP actual development team members on the UT would be great improvement. Publish ALL information about bugs - reported; reproduced by MS staff; interim bypasses. Donate money and design services for a better interface overall. - I would like to have more COM+ samples of real solutions to real problems with easy sample systems. I think Microsoft should give more support to VFP. UT alrady does a great job. Respond to some queries as official MS reps Same as has been. Keep up the good work - keep frequenting this site (and any others out there) that provides help to the VFP community. I think they could participate more strongly clarifying issues about the main weaknesses of the product, giving more definite answers to the comunity. Support the UT in every way possible. Make it well known that the UT is the premier support mechanism. Collaborate. I personally don't think the team have to commit more to any particular resource outside MS, but have an active participation where the community is stronger (and maybe UT is the main point). Pay attention to what the community says they need/want rather than merely presenting the MS stance of what they are going to GET. Give online conference , tips, and idea on programation if your in quebec city like me it's not easy to go to conference and for small company it expensive... ??? updates such as Y. Alan Griver is doing for .NET. To meet regularly with all the UT community, so they know more promptly all that the users know and feel about VFP. No opinion I think MS VFP Team can make the UT a showcase of what it is possible to do with the Fox. More developers articles, focusing in new technologies. Keeping the compatibility with VFP, introducing to WEB and NET developing from a VFP point of view More info on "political" state of VFP vs only technical A regular report from Ken Levy, similar to what Y. Alan Griver is doing for VB.Net would be nice. Simply have a presence. Be an active participant. No idea. Public contact never hurts developers -- they get a feel for what their efforts are being used for. The day to day application developer has a different prespective than the Tools builder. If you don't use the tool daily to develop applications you can only get that view from monitoring and communicating with a wide spectrum of users. Not a limited set of advisors. To spend some money for articals with examples - programms like (Tasmania treaders) but with all last improvements (XML, Web services). The UT runs on itself - Microsoft Marketing has to target new users outside of the existing community Promote as a place to have support, and that the team support. Provide more feedback to the UT community. they do enough. Make it an official support site. No Comment Give copies of VFP 7 to ALL UT Members! :) More support to help develop of applications web oriented with the emergent standards and technologies like HTML, XML, SOAP, NET, etc. we need more documentation and code samples to develop web applications like app combined with SOAP. I have been given excellent support, when needed, by Microsoft's VFP Team and have seen them provide excellent support to others. There is always room for improvement but I think the UT has attracted some of the great minds of the Fox community as a whole and as such there is always someone to help you here at the UT. I have no opinion as I think that VFP is on its last leg as a main developement platform as sad as that is. Microsoft should have saved it by making changes to the language and database engine in version 6. It is a damn site better than MSDE, but it is an albatross because of .NET and the MS push. As much as possible but not in control. UT must stay independent. no opinion I do not visit UT every day, but it seems to me that MS VFP team sits on their thrones in the sky, communicating with us by way of new versions of VFP. In short I'd like to have more feedback between both sides. More interactive with users of UT so that info goes through UT to microsoft In regards to some of the tougher questions floated out on the UT I think a number of non MS individuals really step up to the plate. I think MS support should handle more of the tough questions or at least help in organizing and clarifing the answers and make them available as articles. Friendly but independent comes to mind. no opinion nothing Take the necessary action with regards to the current needs of the developer and be implemented in the next tversion or service packs. I think the people from the VFP support team do already a great job here on th UT. Their help is very valuable and greatly appreciated. There are periods in which they are not very present, probably because they are busy with other tasks. What would be great is if we could establish some kind of feedback on certain subjects such as bug reporting and feature enhancements. Provide more samples, whitepapers adn articles. I think they are doing well their roles in open community with their confidence. I satisfy their present act. More presence in answering questions I would like Microsoft to be more responsive to the problems with VFP that are presented on UT. Example code to tricky problems I don't know. I don't think Microsoft should be solely using the UT. They should also have a presence on CompuServe and FoxForum.com. This might not be a popular idea, but these other forums are fairly big on the radar scopes of other parts of the communuity. Absolutely for sure, Microsoft should house its own Wish List. It is for their benefit, not the benefit of the UT owners. giving free more sample code so every VB programmer can see how easy it is to use. In this way it could be possible to grow with the product. When the product grows more developpers will come. Tell us when bugs are fixed, where to download the patch. Although I have worked with Xbase for 20 years, I still consider myself a novice on OOP and VFP and don't know enough to contribute or offer suggestions...yet. show some real life examples of code such as "Automation" code for Outlook, Word, Excel. Feedback on bugs, faster fixes. Be able to comment on unresolved issues. There is always room for improvement, but for the life of me, I cannot think of anything. This site is awesome. Announcing news - present state of VFP 8.0 - further integration with .NET - VFP and component based architectures - etc. link it to the help engine. I I look for help on how to get the value in list control, there could be links to answers supplied by UT users regarding this topic. Supporting UT to have an open mind and ear Don't know yes No opinion... nothing updates on bug reports and product enhancements posted on the UT Seems OK - not a pressing need I think support is OK, the VFP problem is about marketing ! Make the "reply" button behave nicely for non-premium users. Status Board. Known Bugs with any workarounds, Fixes and what version number the fix is in, Status of next Version. I don't miss any thing according to support. I hope they look at Toledo wish list Make it Free :-) Respond to bug reports (real or precieved) Better support in case of bugreports nothing Talk to us when problems are identified. Currently I have been getting a lot of Exception Code errors. What's going on with that? I know they've identified the problem, but I can't wait for them to fix it. Provide us with some work-around advice for the time being. Announcements of what they are working on for future releases. Stop creating bugs. More involvement in discussions, All fox team members should spend time every week on the thread and other online support Consider the wishes list Continue to accept and implement the user community's ideas in future versions, and to better communicate the current challenges of the VFP language, and publicize work-arounds. Show more feedback on bugtracking. Be supportive, but maybe have UT screen what would get in their view eliminating the more trivial questions and only addressing the deep complex problems. Just keep hanging out here, the more the merrier Just listen to the developers and users of the product. Only as much as they do in the Microsoft newsgroups, e-mail lists, VFUG, etc. Presence in solving problems and providing code to do specific tasks. No opinion...things seem OK as they are. As I state above, until VFP is given the green-light as a full-fledged, royalty-free database solution that can meet even large corporate needs, it will remain as a niche product.

Do you plan to attend VFP conferences in 2002?
Yes, 2 or more	27	8.60%
Yes, 1	127	40.45%
No	160	50.96%
Total	314

Have you deployed a VFP 7 application?
Yes	215	68.47%
No	99	31.53%
Total	314

Are you waiting for a possible VFP SP2 to be released before deploying a VFP 7 application?
Yes	33	10.51%
No, I already deployed applications	215	68.47%
I do not presently use Visual FoxPro 7	66	21.02%
Total	314

Do you plan to upgrade to Visual FoxPro 8?
Yes	271	94.76%
No	15	5.24%
I do not have an opinion	28
Total	314

What version of VFP are you using daily now?
VFP 5 or lower	3	0.96%
VFP 6	91	28.98%
VFP 7	220	70.06%
Total	314

Which types of Visual FoxPro 7 applications have you deployed?
Desktop applications	248	78.98%
Web service	33	10.51%
XML	47	14.97%
Web applications	77	24.52%
Client server	167	53.18%

Do you contribute to the community by offering occasional or regular assistance by the use of technical support engines such as the Universal Thread?
Yes	245	78.03%
No	69	21.97%
Total	314

What is your current employment status?
Permanent	229	72.93%
Temporary	9	2.87%
Contractor	71	22.61%
Unemployed	4	1.27%
Retired	1	0.32%
Total	314

Do you read YAG’s .NET reports on the Universal Thread?
Always	31	9.87%
Sometimes	129	41.08%
Never	75	23.89%
I will consider it from now on	79	25.16%
Total	314

Did you attend some Microsoft chats which were announced by YAG from his weekly reports?
More than 5 times	1	0.32%
1 to 5 times	9	2.87%
Never	186	59.24%
I will consider it from now on	118	37.58%
Total	314

On which aspect of .NET would you like to get more info?
Applications deployment	115	36.62%
Web services	125	39.81%
Windows application (windows forms)	122	38.85%
Web applications (web forms)	133	42.36%
Languages (VB,C#,C++)	138	43.95%
The framework	156	49.68%
Data access	163	51.91%

Which types of .NET applications have you deployed in real business world?
Web service	13	4.14%
Windows application	14	4.46%
Active Server Pages application	14	4.46%
Only test or beta application	69	21.97%

Do you plan to attend some .NET conferences in 2002?
Yes, 2 or more	11	3.50%
Yes, 1	57	18.15%
No	246	78.34%
Total	314

What is your favourite .NET language?
VB .NET	39	12.79%
C# .NET	80	26.23%
C++ .NET	6	1.97%
Java .NET	0	0.00%
JScript .NET	1	0.33%
I do not use .NET	179	58.69%
Other	9
Total	314