Concern over future of FoxPro, what is PowerChurch doing?

[C3HITServ]

We had tremendous problems with another Church Management System (ChMS) package that was based on FoxPro, to the point where the vendor just gave up and said it was "Microsoft FoxPro problems" not theirs! Sure enough, eventually getting the right fix from Microsoft did fix our problems. Now that we are looking for additional features on our ChMS, we are evaluating PowerChurch Plus.

FoxPro is the base for PowerChurch, correct? It looks like support is going to disappear in 2012. What is PowerChurch going to do about the PowerChurch Plus software line when FoxPro support is no more?

Thanks, this is the remaining major hindrance to our move to PowerChurch Plus!

[NeilZ]

We had tremendous problems with another Church Management System (ChMS) package that was based on FoxPro, to the point where the vendor just gave up and said it was "Microsoft FoxPro problems" not theirs! Sure enough, eventually getting the right fix from Microsoft did fix our problems. Now that we are looking for additional features on our ChMS, we are evaluating PowerChurch Plus.

FoxPro is the base for PowerChurch, correct? It looks like support is going to disappear in 2012. What is PowerChurch going to do about the PowerChurch Plus software line when FoxPro support is no more?

Thanks, this is the remaining major hindrance to our move to PowerChurch Plus!

I understand your hesitancy, however, Powerchurch has developed over the years from DOS to Windows, with the developers moving to the newest version of Foxpro when available. Powerchurch currently is based on the latest Foxpro version which, as you noted is still supported by Microsoft. Although many software developers feel that MS is cutting off its nose to spite its face by dropping the Foxpro engine, it is still (in its latest form) still highly configurable, network ready and robust.

FWIW ... in my following of the forums, I've not seen a Foxpro issue in the last few years. My memory is going, but I'm fairly sure on this point. So as far as moving to Powerchurch 10.4, I would not concern yourself about support. You'll be getting good value for the money, or as I often say when asked "More BANG for the BUCK".

That said, I also suspect that the program architects/developers have already started investigating what they will do after version 11 comes out later this year (I believe). It is in their best interests to pursue that investigation as moving to a new development platform/DBMS would expand the range of features they would be able to incorporate.

However, I also suspect that they are also looking at such a platform/DBMS combination so they could hold the price of Powerchurch close to what it is today; affordable to all size churches from 30 to 3000.

Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been, affiliated with the developers of PC+. I am a long term user, tester, and unofficial user-to-user support (and/or confuser) on the forums.

[Jeff]

We have not stated this in public before but version 11 of PowerChurch is the last planned major version using Visual FoxPro 9. After version 11 is released we are planning on starting a major rewrite of PowerChurch to a new platform.

As far as FoxPro the standard support for FoxPro does expire in 2012 with extended support lasting until 2014. In fact, just this week Microsoft released a Hotfix for FoxPro. We have been using FoxPro since FoxPro 2.5 in 1993 and moved to Visual FoxPro 3 in 1996. Any issues that we have had with FoxPro we have been able to create work arounds usually during our own internal testing. We have already tested PowerChurch in 64-bit Windows 7 and have not found any problems.