What is Visual FoxPro?

According to the Wikipedia, Visual FoxPro is a "data-centric object-oriented and procedural programming language produced by Microsoft."

But if you read the main Microsoft web site, Visual FoxPro "provides the tools you need to create and manage high-performance, 32-bit database applications and components."

A far better description, although lengthy, is also provided at the FoxWiki where it states that VFP "is a programming package sold by Microsoft. It contains a programming language, a database engine and an integrated development environment (IDE). An IDE allows programmers to do most of their work inside a single program. VFP has an excellent record of backwards compatibility so code that was written years ago can still be maintained and improved with a minimum of extra work. VFP is also a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool which means that its design is focused on software built quickly."

In short, Visual FoxPro is a combination of a lot of things: it has its own database engine, its own programming language, its own development environment and its own runtime - everything a developer needs to build an application without needing to rely on anything else.

Except, of course, that in modern terms, you likely do need to work with other environments, which Visual FoxPro is fairly good at as well. The bullet points post on the Wiki gives some other good information about FoxPro and why developers should and do choose FoxPro.