Unlike competing titles, it allows users to view and edit memo fields in
dBase III,
dBase IV, FoxPro, VFP and DB2K files.
The shared development teams marketed together, convinced every company to develop for OS/2 (
Dbase, Rbase, Lotus, etc.--much of NT is OS/2 technology).
Borland acquired the
dBASE product line from Ashton Tate back in 1991, but by the mid-1990s the popularity of xBase product lines began to rapidly wane.
Staff members enter each day's surgical specimens into the database using a simple program created with the application generator that comes with
dBase IV.
Then, to make things interesting, Borland bought
dBase. Now speculation runs from predictions that Borland will do away with
dBase to predictions that it will enhance it.
Most of the company's products were created by outside developers; long-term database strategy consisted of little more than a trendy notion of
dbase as a front end to various SQL servers (a model that seems to have attracted more press attention than paying customers).
It was followed closely by Borland's
dBASE and Microsoft's FoxPro, each with 19%.
IntelliLink supports such software programs as Borland Sidekick, Polaris Packrat, Microsoft Word for Windows, WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft Excel,
dBase and Paradox.
Since I had worked with
dBase III + (Ashton-Tate Corp., Torrance, Calif.) for a couple of years, I decided to explore using that program for our database.