April 10, 2021
5 Minutes
Last week I took a dive into the office life of yesteryear with Microsoft Works 3.0 for DOS. Now I’m exploring some more retro business software, this time delving into the ancient database management system known as Borland dBase. dBase was
THE first commercially successful DBMS for microcomputers, and in fact it is still active today, which would give it one of the longest lifespans of any major application software. It began its life in 1978 as a software package for PTDOS and CP/M dubbed Vulcan. It was later bought by Ashton-Tate, renamed dBase, and ported to the Apple II line and to DOS. During the 80’s and 90’s it went through several vastly different versions and was copied by many different software companies, soon being acquired again by Borland Software, who created a third version known as dBase III. dBase is now on its eleventh incarnation, last released by dBase LLC in early 2017.