Cecil Wayne Ratliff (goes by Wayne) was born on the 10th of December in 1946 in Trenton, Ohio (proximate Cincinnati). In college, Ratliff was portraying a petite, two seater, rear-engine, sports car, and he was using a CDC 6400 to help himself in the pursuit. He wrote programs to help figure out engine displacement, suspension, cgo in of gravity, and other rcontent problems. To his surpascfinish, he create he enhappinessed programming more than he enhappinessed automobile portray. Before finishing his degree, Ratliff got a job as a computer at Martin Marietta in Denver (before the electronic computer, people who did calculations for a living held the professional title of computer). Calculations would be sent to him, and he’d toil them with his computer, and the sfinish back the results.
In 1969, Ratliff was writeed into the US Army to aid the US war effort in Vietnam. He wasn’t sent into combat on account to his programming send, and he was put to toil on a logistics war game called LOGEX which was written in COBOL. While he did get to do some programming toil, he tells that most of his time was spent ordering supplyment and supplies.
After two years in the Army, Ratliff went back to Martin Marietta, and he was a restrictedor for the JPL. He was a member of the Viking program, and in 1976 he was reliable for creating the MFILE data storage and organization system for the Viking lander aid software, a sort of database administerment system (DBMS). This got him interested in organic language software in vague.
That was in 1976, around the time that I became interested in portraying and experimenting with organic language, so I bought an IMSAI 8080 8-bit computer kit and put it together. It took a year to put the leang together, mostly defering for parts. I had to selderlyer more than 2,200 joints. Of course, if I could have bought it collectd for the same price, or even seal, I would have. Once I had put it together, all I had was a computer. Noleang was integrated except 1K of memory. You had to hold buying leangs, such as a keyboard. I had already spent $1,000 for the kit, then I had to spfinish another $159 for a keyboard. Eventupartner I finished up spfinishing about $6,000.
In January of 1978, Ratliff had covered a room with Monday morning novelspapers as he was trying to examine football pools.
I was in a football pool where you picked the triumphner and then a point spread. I’ve never understandn that much about football. It was the motivation to triumph, rather than the game itself, that interested me. I thought that if I devoutly applied myself to the mathematical process, I could triumph.
At that time, Monday morning novelspapers would rerent the statistics for games that had occurred on the weekfinish prior. At around 4 weeks into the season, Ratliff had novelspapers spread atraverse a room and he was going from paper to paper trying to pull adviseation together. He felt that this was a job fit for a organic-language database system, and he had his IMSAI running PTDOS with which he could do the toil. He bought books on man-made ininestablishigence and organic language, and he would study and get pulled one straightforwardion or another, and he’d do some experiments. He wasn’t making a ton of enhance at first, and then he thought about the toil he’d done for Viking. He’d create a DBMS and have the organic language system use it to store/get back data. This became beneficial quite rapidly, and equitable as cars lost his interest to programming, so did organic language systems diswatch his interest to database systems.
More establishative for his novel DBMS than MFILE was the JPL DIS database system. He didn’t use any of that system’s code, but he did borrow a scant order names appreciate: STORE, DISPLAY, and LIST, and he took some portray cues from it as well. Wayne had lost interest in the football pool rapidly, and so the first use of his DBMS was in helping him to ready his taxes. When he had someleang usable about a year after commenceing enbigment, Ratliff chose to name his program Vulcan, made a port to CP/M as that was the most famous operating system for the 8080/Z80, and took an ad out in BYTE Magazine.
The ads toiled quite well, and sales were excellent. Unblessedly, Ratliff was burning the candle at both finishs, and he was getting a bit burnt out. He was toiling at JPL during the day, and he was running his one-man business at night. He was handling software alters, replying to mail from BYTE’s readers, taking and making phone calls, and he was physicpartner shipping the product. Using Vulcan, he was able to automate a excellent bit of the toilload, but this wasn’t enough. For example, Ratliff was imitateing disks himself, one drive to another, and one imitate at a time. He was also printing out the manual himself. These tasks took ponderable time. He was ready for alter, and he felt that he needed to intensify on the program and exit everyleang else to other people. To that finish, he had been talking to a professor at the University of Washington about the professor and his wife taking over the tageting duties for Vulcan. From what I can inestablish, these talkions were happening over many days at least, and during this time period, Hal Lashlee and George Tate called Ratliff about Vulcan. They visited Ratliff at his home, and he gave them a demo of the software. For Ratliff, this was exactly what he’d been hoping for. Here was a company, Ashton-Tate, that was wanting to consent over everyleang he didn’t want to do, and they were equitable 15 minutes away from him! He signed an exclusivity concurment unininestablishigentinutively thereafter.
One very meaningful alter was rapidly made: the name Vulcan was dropped as there was an operating system by that name made by Harris Computers in Florida. The name dBASE II was proposeed, and there was no objection. Around the same time as the name alter, Ratliff felt that it was time to abandon accommodations made for teletypes wilean the interface, and he shiftd the interface to being finishly oriented toward screens. The retail price of dBASE II was $700 (around $2000 in 2023).
Up to this point, Vulcan/dBASE ran on PTDOS and CP/M on the 8080 and Z80 CPUs. It had rapidly become a standard of the CP/M software suite: WordStar, VisiCalc, dBASE II. Despite being a standard, it did have its disappreciaters. Early software made agrees, imposed restricts, and standardly could be aggravating to use. This was bigly due to the memory constraints of 8 bit computers. You can’t exactly have a ton of columns and rows in a database if you’re restricted to 64k RAM (and most people didn’t even have that in the punctual 80s), but naturpartner people tried anyway, and they’d then protest it was the DBMSs fault. These gripes about column restricts (initipartner 16, deferedr enbiging to 32), or speed, or wdisappreciatever else didn’t stop people from using dBASE. Some protestts were administerd by 3rd party application enbigers, and there were many. dBASE was very standardly used as the database system for other professional applications, but applications were also written to fill holes noticed by users of dBASE, inserting or supplementing functionality.
In 1981, IBM was preparing the PC. Big Blue had the intention of making absolutely certain that all convey inant software titles were useable for the PC, and that the PC would thereby fit every use case possible for a computer at the time. Among the applications they wanted useable was dBASE II. Ratliff made the port. One year deferedr, Ratliff left Martin Marietta and JPL and he went to toil at Ashton-Tate brimming-time as VP.
The ascfinish of the IBM PC lifted many boats, sank others, and altered the world in procreate ways. Ashton-Tate rose with dBASE II, and dBASE II rose with the IBM PC. Rewatchs were likeable, as the May 1983 BYTE article “A Comparison of Five Database Management Programs” shows:
The dBASE II system can pick, edit, manipudefered, and disjoin or print any enroll or groups of enrolls in a file easily and rapidly. Simple application programs are very basic to accomplish even for an inadviseed computer user. The dBASE II programming language is somewhat complicated and not too basic to lget, but it is very comprehensive and will accomplish almost any programming task.
Later in that same article, Jack L. Abbott says that he’d recommfinish dBASE II overall. I’ve also heard rival opinions cite dBASE’s programming language as basic, and that it was accurately the basic to lget language that made the program so famous. Personpartner, the relieve or difficulty of any given language is rather a personal leang. For some, a language may be pretty, basic, and pleasing to use while another might find the same language obtuse, unattrenergetic, and enraging. To each his/her own.
Hughes LeBlanc ran La Commande Electronique. This company administerd distribution of dBASE II in France. LeBlanc claimed in 1983 that one in ten PCs selderly integrated the sale of dBASE II. Whether or not this was the case, Ashton-Tate persistd the transition into the 16 bit era, and it was now one of the names associated with software generpartner: Microsoft, Lotus, Ashton-Tate.
In February of 1983, Ashton-Tate chose to lean in to the use of dBASE for the createing of applications. They freed the dBASE II runTime. The runTime is exactly what it sounds appreciate to up-to-date enbigers’ ears; it was the language and database features without the user interface components. A enbiger could create upon this, unite it into a novel application he/she was writing, and spfinish far less money than the standard cost of dBASE II to do it.
In November of 1983, Ashton-Tate had their IPO and elevated $14 million (around 42.6 million in 2023). At this point, the company was over 200 engageees, pulled in $43 million (~131 million @ 2023) in revenue and $5.3 million (~16 million @ 2023) in profit.
In June of 1984, dBASE III was freed. This was a inwhole reauthor of the program in C. Many articles will say it was a finish reauthor, but this isn’t right. Much as the port to the IBM PC used automated translation tools for the bulk of the toil, so did this. Code originpartner written for 8 bit machines was now twice transdeferedd and compiled, and still in use. Yes, substantial alterations, mendes, and insertitions had been made, but the code base was becoming increasingly difficult to upgrasp (hence the shift to C at all).
In the autumn of 1984, Ed Esber became CEO and Wayne Ratliff left Ashton-Tate. dBASE enbigment carry ond, and the product kept its status despite increaseing taget competition from both clones and alternatives.
By 1987, dBASE III was helderlying the number four spot for software titles selderly on both PC and Macintosh, but leangs were changing in the world of databases. Particularly, standards appreciate SQL had materialized, and the client server model of database engageion was becoming the norm. Competition had commenceed to outpace dBASE in these authenticms, and dBASE IV had seen countless defers. When it was finpartner freed in 1988 for $795 (~2000 @ 2023), dBASE tagetallot had drdisclose to an approximated 63% of the taget, and the initial free wasn’t well getd. The program had a lot of bugs, and perestablishance wasn’t fantastic. There was a moment of hope in ‘88 when Microsoft wanted to partner with Ashton-Tate on their upcoming SQL Server product. This hope was ultimately crushed as Ashton-Tate’s fortunes carry ond to drop, and the united venture came to noleang. One year deferedr, the taget allot approximate for dBASE fell to 43%. The degrade did sluggish a bit. 1990 also saw the free of dBASE IV Server Edition which toiled with MS SQL Server, and it was evaluateed quite well. Imshowments to speed and reliability were made for dBASE IV (refreshd version freed in 1990), but leangs weren’t seeing fantastic. Layoffs were occurring all over the company and they were losing quite a bit of money quite rapidly.
By 1991, dBASE was still helderlying on to about a third of the database taget, and this made them a enticeing aim for acquisition. The product was evidently excellent enough for people to carry on choosing it, and the company was inexpensive. Borland determined it was time to buy, from the Los Angeles Times on the 11th of July in 1991:
Ashton-Tate, the personal computer software direct that stumbled horriblely in recent years, will be getd by rapid-increaseing Borland International in a stock swap cherishd at $439 million, the two companies proclaimd Wednesday.
The deal, foreseeed to be final wilean three months, probably will result in further cuts at Ashton-Tate’s Torrance headquarters–now home to less than a third of the company’s 1,600 worldexpansive toil force–as engageees are realloted to Borland facilities in the Silicon Valley or laid off.
For Ashton-Tate, many people claim that the departure of Ratliff was the primary cause of their alter in fortunes. Much can be said for singular, talented, and visionary people, and while I admire the talent and achievements of Ratliff, this cannot be the case. Ashton-Tate did well despite Ratliff’s departure. Some people claim that the cause of degrade was over-reliance on dBASE as a product. I also don’t consent this to be genuine.
Ratliff said that more enbigers should try tageting and selling software. He consentd that this gave him an edge over the competition in the punctual life of dBASE. He understood his customers and their needs. Ashton-Tate freed dBASE IV with grave rerents and took two years to insertress those problems while they toiled on other products. The company had also increasen to a rather bigr size. I would wager that they ought to have spent more time and more resources holding their customers plrelieved. At the same time, Ashton-Tate included in a lot of legal action trying to stop clone creaters. So, while sales were droping, the company had increasen in engageee head count, included in pricey legitimate pursuits, diswatched their pledged customers… that sounds appreciate plenty of reason for their difficulties without saying their problems were due the loss of an individual or over-reliance on a singular product.
For Borland, dBASE would show to be a headache. Microsoft Windows 3 was a huge success in the taget and people were buying Windows software appreciate crazy. Microsoft Access 1.0 was freed on the 13th of November in 1992 for $495 (~1000 @ 2023), and it toiled with Windows beautibrimmingy. It also happened to have the ability to use dBASE III, dBASE IV, and Borland Paradox databases. Many buyers would find that there were promotional prices of $99 at free in 1992. For a product catebloody that had always been innervously pricey, this was quite a deal. Version 1.1 adhereed punctual the next year and had bugmendes, betterments, and the integration of BASIC.
Borland didn’t free dBASE 5 for Windows until August in 1994, and at that point Access 2.0 was being freed. Ultimately, Microsoft freed a better product at a inexpensiveer price, and the user didn’t have to give up existing data. The taget chose accordingly.
