It was built on BASIC – and it really took off at a time (late 1970s / early 1980s) when BASIC was still a very major programming language. I think its databas

It was built on BASIC – and it really took off at a time (late 1970s / early 1980s) when BASIC was still a very major programming language. I think its database features have been somewhat overhyped – but no doubt an area of strength when compared to other lower-end systems of the same time period. The fact that the OS, programming language and database were all a single software package, developed together and sold as a unit, attracted people. Much of its initial success was also due to its marketing strategy – target ISVs who would resell it as the basis of turnkey solutions. It was based on a virtual machine, which made it easy to port to disparate hardware platforms – everything from PCs, to multiple incompatible minicomputer lines, to IBM mainframes – a key selling point in its day – although not a unique approach (see UCSD Pascal). Other approaches to portability – such as the C programming language – hadn't really taken off yet.