Lots more good info from you, thanks!  I agree that Microsoft is clear about product life cycles, and generally quite generous with those life cycles too.  Now that I see the correct life cycle info, I have no argument with MS re the FoxPro support drop.  And yes, I noticed (and already used) that life cycle page to look up a few other MS products.
 
Re MS Office 365, I am actually a subscriber to Office 365 Home, and even that edition includes Access, which greatly influenced my decision to subscribe.
 
I'm delighted with 64-bit BigInt, and will look at all those links you supplied.  Thanks again.  I recognize that there is still the overall question of what would suite my purposes best.  To be, or not to be, MS and/or Windows dependent will remain a question in this whole deliberation.
 
Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331


On 14 March 2017 at 19:50, John Lange <john@johnlange.ca> wrote:
Actually, to be fair, Microsoft is _very_ clear and open about product life cycles.

At the link I provided you can search for any Microsoft Product. For example, if you enter "Access", the first result is "Access 2016", which was the last "on-prem" version. It goes off support 10/13/2020. In reality, Access will be supported far beyond that date because it's now part of the o365 "Pro Plus" product group which gets continual updates and releases. This falls under the "Modern" support policy (the old policy for subscription products is called "Fixed"). Details here:


If you want to know what's up with o365, then you go to the roadmap site:


For example, a quick search for "access" reveals that they just recently rolled out:

"Add support for 64-bit numbers (BigInt) as a new Access/Ace DataType."

and

"Connect to external dBASE database, and import or link to dBASE files."

So Access is not just supported, but is still being actively developed with new features added, not just patches.

It's a pretty safe bet that Access will be supported beyond 2025, though not necessarily the best choice for most projects (see: SQL Express, C#, .NET, etc.).

John


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