Why is FoxPro used for POS systems? [closed]

Question

I'm looking at upgrading a POS (Point Of Sale) project which is currently built in FoxPro to .net. The planned architecture is quite complex and there is plenty of rationale behind the new technologies chosen. Some of the requirements include the ability to have both desktop and web front end (where web front end has limited functionality), syncing data with an external website and the ability for multiple clients to run off of 1 server. My current model of choice is an MVP pattern with Sql Server (probably Express) as the DB, and a WCF service layer between the presentation and services in order to allow for remote UIs.

My concern is that during my research I have noticed that there seems to be a common theme amongst touch screen POS systems to build them in FoxPro.

Apologies for the slightly subjective question however I am keen to find out if there is any particular reason for this? Does FoxPro have any particular out of the box functionality that lends itself to this type of system? I have not used FoxPro and so before finalising my choice of technologies for this project would like to make sure I am not missing a trick by ruling it out completely.

Answer 1

Probably because FoxPro is a POS.

(I kid, I kid.)

Answer 2

Licencing - SQLserver didn't run well on client OSes and was expensive.

Foxpro was cheap and easy.

If all you are doing is retrieving price values from one table and updating sales in another, then SQL is rather overkill.