Visual FoxPro is a
data-centric,
object-oriented,
procedural,
programming language produced by
Microsoft. It is derived from
FoxPro (originally known as FoxBASE) which was developed by Fox Software beginning in 1984. It contained the fastest PC-based database engine available at the time. Fox Technologies merged with Microsoft in 1992, after which the software acquired further features and the prefix "Visual". The database engine became known as the
Microsoft Jet Database Engine which was used by
Microsoft Access. The last version, (
FoxPro 2.6) worked on
Mac OS,
DOS,
Windows, and
Unix: Visual FoxPro 3.0, the first "Visual" version, reduced platform support to only Mac and Windows, and later versions were Windows-only. The current version of Visual FoxPro is
COM-based and Microsoft has stated that they do not intend to create a
Microsoft .NET version.