dBase: 1979-2026

I remember dBASE IV from my childhood days when my father, who had no computer background, was required to take computer training by his workplace. My father and his colleagues were given free evening computer lessons by their company, taught by the same teachers who used to teach us, the kids, computers in our school.

After their first class, he brought home a fat dBASE IV manual. Since I was very interested in computer books, I read a good portion of it even though I had never touched dBASE in my life. I would daydream of all the little forms, queries, reports and labels I could make with dBASE. But I never got to touch dBASE in my life. We kids used to get LOGO lessons instead in school.

One day my father came back from his evening lesson mildly distressed about something he had learnt. He said they were being taught loops but in the loop there was an equation that seemed just plain wrong. It was:

  i = i + 1

How could that be a valid equation? How could i ever equal i + 1? He mentioned that he had asked the teacher about it and from what I could gather, my teacher and my father were talking past each other. The teacher probably tried explaining that it was not an equation but an instruction instead, whereas my father continued to interpret i = i + 1 as an equation due to the algebra he was so familiar with. It sort of held up the class for a while.

The teacher asked my father's name, perhaps so that he could talk to him separately later. But when he learnt my father's name, he realised that his son, me, went to the same school where he taught. So he told my father, 'When you get back home, ask your son about i = i + 1. He will explain it to you better than I am able to.'

And indeed I was able to explain it to him pretty well. I was eight or nine years old back then. And that was probably the first thing I taught my father!

I find this blog consistently negative (check other posts.) Although this post is interesting, and I know little about dBase and this is a sad story, I am simply not sure how accurate all of the blog as a whole is. I can best suggest, take its statements as someone's personal opinion, not necessarily as fact, ie but with a pinch of salt.

> It is believed that - alongside the BOLD source code (missing for more than 10+ years), the BDE and many original dBase source code was lost during the ill fated Borland + Corel merger (which was eventually called off).

This is confusing because the article is supposedly about dBase, and I have no idea why Bold is relevant. It's an example of where I feel the general negativity of the blog veers into random discussions.

To the best of my knowledge, the Bold source was not lost. In fact, Embarcadero open sourced it several years ago. The blog post has details: https://blogs.embarcadero.com/bold-for-delphi-is-open-source... I worked there at the time though I did not drive its open sourcing, but it is a positive move, and clearly contrasts the blog's statement. It appears actively maintained and updated these days. I would differentiate 'lost' from 'owned but not made available publicly'.

The article states

>By feeding legacy PRG (circa 1985) and logics to models like Claude, ChatGPT, developers can now instruct the AI to translate decades-old dBase PRG directly into memory-safe Rust, highly concurrent Go, or modern Dart/Flutter cross-platform applications.

And it alludes to this early on, but it doesn't show any examples.

One of my first jobs had a legacy application that was based on Clipper. I never had to work with it directly (since I worked on the SQL successor) but reading the source code was still fascinating.

Semi off-topic: The wikipedia article on Ed Esber is in dire need of a clean up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Esber

I still maintain a VFP9 project from time to time. Although AI has been extremely helpful in writing VFP9 code, I can't imagine migrating this enormous project, which has grown over the course of 30 years, to a more modern system by feeding the source code to AI.

While one could debate which approach would be best for migrating such a project, an 'AI-led Big Bang Migration' would be insane.

However, AI would certainly be helpful for migration.

I remember my father built its own personal accounting tool using dbase, I think it was MSDOS at the time, I was a kid. Quite the achievement I think, he was not a software engineer, just hobbyist.

Microsoft Access 2.0 had filters to import and export data from and to DBF files. We used this in WFW 3.11 to convert from DBase to MS-Access and later on SQL Server.

There were some Turbo C and Turbo Pascal source code that read DBF files, but hardly anyone used them. Most stored data is in text files that can be read by any application.

My very first paid gig, aged 12, was figuring out how to print mailing labels from a Bondwell CP/M laptop running dBase II. Didn't enjoy it.

Resurrect this kind of language is one of my goals (https://tablam.org) but of course with different takes.

I think the main gist: you work not as app developer but as db developer, is something that is missing in some partial attempt like access and such.

BTW: Wanna join me or help?

You may compile .prg files with Harbour, an open source Clipper clone compiler, on github.

Strange it is not cited in the post.

One of my favourite DB systems, started with dBase III+ where our teacher made us enter the high-school library records, followed up with Clipper Summer '87, and shortly thereafter Clipper 5.x with its OOP extensions.

Great productivity tool, garbage collected, compiled, in the constrained environment of MS-DOS PCs.

The migration to Windows 3.1 took too much time, giving time to FoxPro, Access, Visual Basic and Delphi to establish themselves to the same programming communities.

Similar to other HNers, Clipper was also how I made my first attempts to working for others during high school.

The Borland/Inprise/Embarcadero mess impacted a lot of software.

They could have still been the king of the hill now if it weren't for the suits who completely ruined it after Philippe Kahn left the scene.

I feel the timeline is wrong re when dBase Inc took over. I remember working as a consultant on shipping new features for dBase back in 2000 or so.

I implemented reflection for the dBase language and was also part of trying to convert it to Visual C++ instead of using the Borland compiler. I was very green back then but it was interesting, my only time dealing with interpreters / compilers

I worked in dBase professionally for a long time. Loved the system but the database constantly needing repair was an issue.

Fascinating obituary for dBase; software history repeats through neglect, litigation, complacency.

In 1998 I wrote a financial summary for our ERP system (EUROnet) running on MS DOS with a dBase db in the backend. I've connected the dBase to a PHP 3 web server with Apache 1 and then summarized the sales data. My boss loved it. He could see numbers which are not implemented in the ERP reports.

My first gig at 18 was managing my university library's database (in dBase III; it was the 1980s) and writing the user interfaces for searching. This was a pre-SQL database for you youngins in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.

The dbase.com domain now appears to be down too.

What the article describes doesn't apply to those who migrated already to FoxPro (and/or Harbour), yes?

One of my first sizeable projects was a COM-compatible compiled language with .dbf support primitives for data transformation. As a unique quirk, it could even work on Novel Netware to interface with Btrieve.

Netware supported loading PE executables, but it lacked memory protection so developing for it was... fun.

The .dbf format was pretty straightforward, though.

  i = i + 1

And indeed I was able to explain it to him pretty well. I was eight or nine years old back then. And that was probably the first thing I taught my father!

Perhaps this is why BASIC originally used LET in the form LET X = X + 1, to imply a calculation rather than equality.

Some of my earliest programming exposure was a dBASE IV book my dad had for work, though it was some time before I put any of it into action. At that time I was reading manuals like fiction, only slowly realizing that I could actually use some of it with our computer.

It’s a pity your father’s perspective didn’t prevail. We’d all be using better programming languages now.

Perhaps this is why BASIC originally used LET in the form LET X = X + 1, to imply a calculation rather than equality.

Think that was just to make the parser understand it was an assignment without having to do any lookahead. There was also possibly ambiguous stuff with equality and assingment as they both used =.

You may compile .prg files with Harbour, an open source Clipper clone compiler, on github.

Strange it is not cited in the post.

I remember my father built its own personal accounting tool using dbase, I think it was MSDOS at the time, I was a kid. Quite the achievement I think, he was not a software engineer, just hobbyist.

The Borland/Inprise/Embarcadero mess impacted a lot of software.

They could have still been the king of the hill now if it weren't for the suits who completely ruined it after Philippe Kahn left the scene.

Fascinating obituary for dBase; software history repeats through neglect, litigation, complacency.

I worked in dBase professionally for a long time. Loved the system but the database constantly needing repair was an issue.

I feel the timeline is wrong re when dBase Inc took over. I remember working as a consultant on shipping new features for dBase back in 2000 or so.

One of my first jobs had a legacy application that was based on Clipper. I never had to work with it directly (since I worked on the SQL successor) but reading the source code was still fascinating.

Semi off-topic: The wikipedia article on Ed Esber is in dire need of a clean up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Esber

While one could debate which approach would be best for migrating such a project, an 'AI-led Big Bang Migration' would be insane.

However, AI would certainly be helpful for migration.

The dbase.com domain now appears to be down too.

Netware supported loading PE executables, but it lacked memory protection so developing for it was... fun.

The .dbf format was pretty straightforward, though.

What the article describes doesn't apply to those who migrated already to FoxPro (and/or Harbour), yes?

Think that was just to make the parser understand it was an assignment without having to do any lookahead. There was also possibly ambiguous stuff with equality and assingment as they both used =.

The article states

And it alludes to this early on, but it doesn't show any examples.

As an alternative to leaving this to an LLM I came across:

https://github.com/infused/dbf/

I'm not sure what the article suggests - create a custom rust program that reads and writes to a given dbf file? Create a rust program that mirrors the PRG code, writing/reading data in a custom format?

Microsoft Access 2.0 had filters to import and export data from and to DBF files. We used this in WFW 3.11 to convert from DBase to MS-Access and later on SQL Server.

There were some Turbo C and Turbo Pascal source code that read DBF files, but hardly anyone used them. Most stored data is in text files that can be read by any application.

MS Access can use DBF files almost as if they were standard Access tables. This was particularly useful when working with ESRI Shapefiles, as it allowed the DBF files to be edited in Access and the changes to be viewed directly in ArcGIS. When editing maps, Access was often more convenient than the ESRI Editor.

Resurrect this kind of language is one of my goals (https://tablam.org) but of course with different takes.

I think the main gist: you work not as app developer but as db developer, is something that is missing in some partial attempt like access and such.

BTW: Wanna join me or help?

I want to say no. As a way of working those dbms systems were a dead end. Not every problem is database tables and having had a job replacing a dBase III system I never want to see it or its ilk again

My very first paid gig, aged 12, was figuring out how to print mailing labels from a Bondwell CP/M laptop running dBase II. Didn't enjoy it.

Very similar story, in 1982: got paid at 15 to create a prospect database for a small business. What now would be called a CRM.

The enterprise had to declare me as an apprentice for 'trade jobs', as it was against the law to give a regular salary to someone under 16.

I remember my first paycheck with deductions for retirement, which pissed me off quite a bit.

Great productivity tool, garbage collected, compiled, in the constrained environment of MS-DOS PCs.

The migration to Windows 3.1 took too much time, giving time to FoxPro, Access, Visual Basic and Delphi to establish themselves to the same programming communities.

Similar to other HNers, Clipper was also how I made my first attempts to working for others during high school.

Ah, Clipper was a major force in the late ’80s in Yugoslavia, as economic reforms enabled the widespread establishment of private companies that needed accounting software, and PCs became cheap enough for one-person shops to develop custom accounting solutions. It was the Wild West for a few years, with a zillion different applications, until some bigger players emerged.

IIRC, it needed one or two 360K floppies for a full install (a pirated copy; maybe the legal distribution was larger - at that time, all software was pirated). Compiling was fast (on a computer where you type dir and can read the filenames appearing on the screen faster than the computer can print them), but linking was slow, so everyone replaced MS Link with Borland’s TurboLink, which was an order of magnitude faster. It didn’t support overlays, but there were ways to work around that.

There was also documentation available in some third-party TSR app.

Later, another linker became popular: Blinker, which had a bunch of interesting features, such as loading overlays into EMS memory and providing various security functions to help protect your software. But by that time, the writing was already on the wall for DOS.

Funnily enough, many customers actually preferred DOS, since navigating with the keyboard was far faster than using a mouse, and Windows apps generally weren’t designed with keyboard navigation in mind.

It’s a pity your father’s perspective didn’t prevail. We’d all be using better programming languages now.

It's a notational issue. IIRC Pascal used := for assignment and = for equality testing.

Where this becomes extremely Rorsarch is the spectrum between "notation is absolutely critical: there is only one correct representation of programs in people's heads and we have to match that exactly" vs. "all program text is ultimately syntactic sugar and programmers will just adapt to whatever". History tells us that the C choice of = for assignment and == for equality testing won, but of course that's not a choice in a vacuum and it's tied up with a thousand other choices.

Very similar story, in 1982: got paid at 15 to create a prospect database for a small business. What now would be called a CRM.

The enterprise had to declare me as an apprentice for 'trade jobs', as it was against the law to give a regular salary to someone under 16.

I remember my first paycheck with deductions for retirement, which pissed me off quite a bit.

As an alternative to leaving this to an LLM I came across:

https://github.com/infused/dbf/

80% of everything is crap anyway, no matter which tech stack. But I think something was lost, not everything is a database, but ever since Microsoft started ignored MS Access, nothing is a database. Or rather, Excel is used as a database. That can't be good either.

It's a notational issue. IIRC Pascal used := for assignment and = for equality testing.

There was also documentation available in some third-party TSR app.

I think parent was alluding to mutability.

Ah, Blinker! Never used it, but remeber the ads in magazines.

Same in Iberian penisula regarding software acquisition, even during university, the same copy centers for books, also offered catalogs of which software we would like to have, or street baazars even, only in the 2000's the goverment (in Portugal) actually started hunting down those practices.

Ah, Blinker! Never used it, but remeber the ads in magazines.

I think parent was alluding to mutability.

While I'm a big fan of immutable design, it makes some algorithms much more expensive and ultimately DRAM is mutable. And the example we're talking about could be a loop counter!

Oh 100% agree on Excel - it's no substitute for those dBase/Clipper/Fox systems.

Y'know what? It's probably true that niche needs filling again as long as it isn't the dBase file format. I had to deal with one system that blew the documented max file size for dBase III but for some bizarre reason, the original dBase III executable didn't care.

However, you couldn't load it with any of the ODBC drivers it would fail. Except for one obscure Sybase based driver I have forgotten the details of.

Just couldn't deal with it again I don't think.

Oh 100% agree on Excel - it's no substitute for those dBase/Clipper/Fox systems.

However, you couldn't load it with any of the ODBC drivers it would fail. Except for one obscure Sybase based driver I have forgotten the details of.

Just couldn't deal with it again I don't think.

While I'm a big fan of immutable design, it makes some algorithms much more expensive and ultimately DRAM is mutable. And the example we're talking about could be a loop counter!

While the official dBase.com LLC’s website is still on-line, its newsgroups have been off-line since November 2025.

For those still trapped in its ecosystem, there is finally an escape route: AI powered migrations.

Years ago, dBase was the undisputed king of databases - every business, every person using IBM or IBM-compatible PCs had to get it installed.

But instead of innovating to remain the best database in the face of competition, former Ashton-Tate CEO Ed Esber decided to litigate. Lawsuits designed to protect “look and feel” copyrights had a massive, chilling effect on the dBase community1.

Ashton-Tate targeted its own unsuspecting customers with “piracy audits”, and ask them to pay extra fees for licenses. External consultants were given sales quotas for official dBase consultant status - a predatory practice that was unthinkable in an era when software development cycles took years.

dBase customers pushed back, asking the obvious questions: _When is a Novell NetWare-compatible server coming? When are we getting a network-aware UNIX dBase server?
_
Competitors answered. FoxBase released FoxPro UNIX server in 19932. Btrieve release their Novell-compatible servers in 19943.

Public humiliation and years of harassment by rent-seeking vendors destroyed developer trust long before the bugs began piling up.

When dBase for Windows arrived, it came with three competing systems:

Paradox for Windows
C++ low-level ISAM methods (TurboPascal Database Toolbox, Turbo C++ ISAM) and
A cottage of smaller vendors (BTree Filer/NexusDB), CodeBase (now open-source), Sequiter, Halycon were DPMI compatible.

Bizarrely, to protect dBase, there was no compatible Turbo C++ objects integration in dBase (you could import OBJ files from Microsoft C++). There was no way to natively use dBase from Turbo C++ or TurboPascal.

Borland did ship Paradox SDK which uses OVL (overlay) and DLL. When Borland Delphi 1.0 came out, they provided access via BDE, an 5- or 6- floppy disk installation routine.

It is believed that - alongside the BOLD source code (missing for more than 10+ years), the BDE and many original dBase source code was lost during the ill fated Borland + Corel merger (which was eventually called off).

The reason why its considered lost - when Borland sold Borland Office pack - Borland WordPerfect, Borland Paradox to Corel4, it kept the same BDE version from 2001. Download Corel Paradox 2026 and… you’ll see nothing changed from since 20015.

Microfocus brought Borland SCM, Borland Server, Borland legacy products. If you license Microfocus legacy SCM products, you install Borland legacy Database Engine (MDE) that includes legacy POJO (Plain Old Java Objects) and COBOL interoperability to dBase.

Meanwhile, the dBase III and IV file format became the default format for GIS systems and import/exporting from IBM mainframes, keeping the data format alive even as dBase market-share declined.

In 2012, dBase was hived off from Borland and divested to dBase LLC. dBase LLC released dBase 9, moving to Visual C++ and CodeJock to replace Borland's aging Object Windows Library (OWL).

However, from dBase 8 all the way through dBase 12+, they never removed BDE. The BDE runtime included files timestamped from 1998. After 2019, meaningful development effectively stopped.

Photocredit: CodeJock.com - the SDK that powers dBase grids

As the platform decayed, dark patterns emerged:

dBase third-party vendors refused to provide source code for their add-ons, shipping them as compiled binary files and trapping enterprise customers on MS-DOS, 16-bit, or 32-bit Windows. dBase third-party vendors continued selling “software assurance” or subscriptions for non-existent upgrades.

If you contacted them for support, you were ignored. If you complained about bad products, it was “the customer’s fault.” When frustrated businesses tried to file lawsuits, they found that these court-smart vendors had hidden behind shell LLCs and fake PO Boxes.

As the years flew by, many of these developers simply retired. They closed their websites, changed their legal names (who reads public newspaper notices anyways?), cashed their final subscription checks, and rode off into the sunset, leaving businesses stranded high and dry.

As Gen Z developers attempt to migrate 16-bit Clipper, FoxPro, or dBase to modern platforms, something incredible has happened.

The latest frontier AI models reads .PRG code It can parse all the way down to 16-bit dBase, FoxPro and Clipper .NTX files.

By feeding legacy PRG (circa 1985) and logics to models like Claude, ChatGPT, developers can now instruct the AI to translate decades-old dBase PRG directly into memory-safe Rust, highly concurrent Go, or modern Dart/Flutter cross-platform applications.

Rest in Peace, dBase. I hardly knew thee.

You sided with third-party vendors, causing life-long customers to get their reputations ruined on the former Borland newsgroups.

These same vendors prioritized their own pension over the survival of the ecosystem. They locked the doors from the inside and threw away the key. Now, decades later, artificial intelligence has arrived to finally cut the locks.

We aren't here to revive you; we are just here to help the survivors get out.

No posts

Hacker Times

Hacker Times

Discussion

Discussion