They licensed it, re-released it as dBASE II, and later ported it to IBM PC computers running DOS.

A major upgrade was released as dBase III and ported to a wider variety of platforms, including UNIX and VMS.

[5] This changed with the poor reception of dBase IV, whose design and stability were so lacking that many users switched to other products.

In 1971, Thompson collaborated with Jack Hatfield, a programmer at JPL, to write an enhanced version of RETRIEVE, which became the JPLDIS project.

He used this as the basis for a port to PTDOS on his kit-built IMSAI 8080 microcomputer, and called the resulting system Vulcan (after the home planet of Mr. Spock on Star Trek).

Hal Pawluk, who handled marketing for the nascent company, decided to change the name to the more business-like "dBase".

[citation needed] Although some critics stated that dBase was difficult to learn, its success created many opportunities for third parties.

After a few rapid upgrades, the system stabilized and was once again a best-seller throughout the 1980s, and formed the famous "application trio" of PC compatibles (dBase, Lotus 123, and WordPerfect).

[citation needed] dBase IV added a built-in screen generator;[27][28] in dBASE III and earlier, third party screen generators were available, including Luis Castro's ViewGen which was purchased by Fox Software and bundled with FoxPro 1.0 as FoxView.

[29] Along the way, Borland, which had bought Ashton-Tate, brought out a revised dBase IV in 1992[30] but with a focus described as "designed for programmers" rather than "for ordinary users".

[citation needed] For handling data, dBase provided detailed procedural commands and functions to[39] dBase is an application development language and integrated navigational database management system which Ashton-Tate labeled as "relational" but it did not meet the criteria defined by Dr. Edgar F. Codd's relational model.

[citation needed] Over time, Ashton-Tate's competitors introduced so-called clone products and compilers that had more robust programming features such as user-defined functions (UDFs), arrays for complex data handling.

Ashton-Tate and its competitors also began to incorporate SQL, the ANSI/ISO standard language for creating, modifying, and retrieving data stored in relational database management systems.

[citation needed] By the end of 1992, major software companies raised the stakes by acquiring the leading xBase products.

[citation needed] By the year 2000, the xBase market had faded as developers shifted to new database systems and programming languages.

[citation needed] In 2015, a new member of the xBase family was born: the XSharp (X#) language, maintained as an open source project with a compiler, its own IDE, and Microsoft Visual Studio integration.

[citation needed] Today, implementations of the dBase language have expanded to include many features targeted for business applications, including object-oriented programming, manipulation of remote and distributed data via SQL, Internet functionality, and interaction with modern devices.

Because of its origins as an interpreted interactive language, dBase used a variety of contextual techniques to reduce the amount of typing needed.

This is an example of a feature that made dBase programming flexible and dynamic, sometimes called "meta ability" in the profession.

But, dBase tended to be used for custom internal applications for small and medium companies where the lack of protection against copying, as compared to compiled software, was often less of an issue.

[citation needed] A major legacy of dBase is its .dbf file format, which has been adopted in a number of other applications.

[47][48] dBase's database system was one of the first to provide a header section for describing the structure of the data in the file.

[citation needed] BYTE's Jerry Pournelle in July 1980 called Vulcan "infuriatingly excellent" because the software was powerful but the documentation was poor.

I think so", Malcolm Rubel wrote in the magazine in 1989, describing it as "a quantum leap over dBASE III Plus in functionality, power, and ease of use".

He said that the software was 100% upward compatible as Ashton-Tate had promised, and praised Control Center as greatly improving on III Plus's Assist mode.