I started out with dBASE III+ but never really got it. Borland had a far superior product in Paradox (which they bought from Ansa). Paradox 3.5 helped me unders

I started out with dBASE III+ but never really got it. Borland had a far superior product in Paradox (which they bought from Ansa). Paradox 3.5 helped me understand the power of relational databases -- the Paradox Application Language (PAL) was an amazing language and so was Query-By-Example (QBE). But Borland also decided to buy Ashton-Tate so for a while they owned both dBASE and Paradox. dBASE became the red-headed stepchild in the Borland world, but still consumed Borland resources to develop and maintain. It was a weird time in the industry.