5 ms·
Borland bought Aston-Tate in 1991, and thereafter owned dBase. Borland also developed Paradox prior to that acquisition. Clipper and FoxBase were dBase clones
by teilo 6y ago
Borland bought Aston-Tate in 1991, and thereafter owned dBase.
Borland also developed Paradox prior to that acquisition.
Clipper and FoxBase were dBase clones, and not always compatible.
I did a lot of Clipper programming in the 90s, and a lot of reporting in MS Access. The dBase ODBC drivers could sometimes be hit or miss when used with Clipper DBFs.
- pjmlp 6y agoFor DB applications, I got introduced to xBase via dBase III, then moved into Clipper Summer '87, followed by Clipper 5.x including doing OOP stuff in it. And that was it, Visual Objects was a disappointment and I eventually fully focused on C++/TPW based applications on Windows 3.x.
- teilo 6y agoAnd let's not forget Btrieve. Prior to my Clipper work, I did a lot of work building an estimation and accounting system based on Btrieve databases, using an obscure system called TAS Professional. Evidently it still survives in some incarnation: http://www.cassoftware.com/tas/manual/index.html?btrievesetup.htm http://www.cassoftware.com/tas/manual/index.html?btrievesetu...
- tibbydudeza 6y agoWe used it under DOS for our backoffice system - you talked to the "database" engine using an interrupt via loaded as a TSR utility.
- tibbydudeza 6y agoBorland bought Paradox (was developed by Ansana (???)) as a me-too move when their biggest competitors Microsoft/Lotus was moving into databases.
- teilo 6y agoBorland had very little except "me too" products, TBH. Pascal, C++, etc. But Delphi was a nice system, FWIW. Of all the Borland products, this one had the longest shelf-life, now still actively developed by Embarcadero.
- wenc 6y agoI really don't agree and I don't think creating a product in the same category is "me-too". Borland had some truly great products back in the day. Quattro Pro had innovations that surpassed the incumbent 1-2-3's. Paradox had innovations that superseded dBASE. Turbo Pascal was a popular product on its own merit (UCSD Pascal, Quick/MS Pascal never caught on commercially). Turbo C and Quick C were competitors, and many applications back in the day used the Turbo Vision text UI. In the 1980s and early 90s, the marketplace was full of competing office products before Microsoft Office came around and dominated then scene (folks might remember Lotus SmartSuite and Corel WordPerfect Office). Spreadsheets weren't always synonymous Excel, nor word processors with Word.
- teilo 6y agoDude, I used to use Visicalc.
- wenc 6y agoWhich should help you understand my perspective better. I don’t agree that Borland “had very little except "me too" products“ just because another product in the same category existed first. Lotus 1-2-3 was essentially a clone of VisiCalc on the IBM PC but it was also its own thing.
- wenc 6y agoI don't remember this history -- Borland bought Ansa Paradox in 1987. Microsoft had no desktop database product then. It bought FoxPro in 1992 and Access was released in 1992. Lotus also had no desktop database product then. Lotus bought Approach in 1994. The dominant desktop database products of the time were dBASE/xBASE (Clipper, FoxPro etc.). Which database products from MS/Lotus were you thinking of?
- protomyth 6y agoI know of at least one government contractor that was still shipping a clipper application at least until 2019. It is amazing the software that is foisted on government grantees.
- EricE 6y agoI recently came across my old Clarion disks. Clarion on OS/2 - those were the days!