The Return of Ashton-Tate

by John M. Kinney

“I feel that the reports of my

death are highly exaggerated.” -

Mark Twain, circa 1880.

“We feel that the reports of our

death are highly exaggerated.” -

Ashton-Tate, circa 1990.

While Ashton-Tate probably never said that, they had a good right to. Take a short trip with me back into time.

Dateline: Comdex, Las Vegas, Nevada, November, 1989. “Experts declare Dbase is dead.” Dbase is dead? How did it happen? What will happen to all the people out there that make their living using Dbase? Who the hell are the “experts.”

The Experts

Let’s take the last question first. Who are the experts? Among the list of dignitaries that declared Dbase dead are Adam Green. Adam Green? Mr. Dbase? The person that probably did more to spread the use Dbase than anyone in history? How many of us got started by using his book? How could he say that Dbase was dead? And how could he be an expert in a language that was dead?

In his new newsletter, “The Green Letter,” Adam Green states, “ While some of my comments may have helped fuel the fire...” and “If! had lied when dBASE IV 1.0 appeared, as some at Ashton-Tate did, and claimed that the product was fine, nobody would ever listen to me again.”

Well, I guess some of the experts did have a reason to say Dbase was dead. After all, it was a

“terrible” product. Maybe Ash- ton-Tate should take advice from Gab wines and release no software before its time.

But was Dbase really dead? What about the Fox and Nantucket users? Were they really out of a job? Have you tried to sell a Dbase product to upper management lately? They are real gun shy.

The Consultants

As consultants, we would still have a job for years to come. There are many, many copies of Dbase out there now that upper management will not just throw them away. They will still need help with the products. Even if Dbase does die, there is still a need for database management products. After all, except for word processors, most of the work done on computers is with database managers.

Right now we have two, good, solid, database management products. probably the best, at least that’s what all the consultants I know say, is FoxPro. And we also have Clipper, Summer ‘87. (It’s too soon for a verdict on Clipper 5.0.) So, as consultants, we are secure right now. But what about the future? Well, as for me, I am studying other products, including Paradox, Emerald Bay, and OOPS. In today’s industry, we cannot afford to know just one product.

How did it happen?

How did Dbase almost die? I feel there are three reasons Dbase almost died.

1. Insulting the consultants - Before Ed Esber took the helms of Ashton-Tate, there was a good rapport between the development community and Ashton-Tate. But what hap-

pened to Ashton-Tate after Mr. Ed took over the reigns? He insulted the consultants. He acted as if they were not important.

Instead of supporting the Dbase development community, Ed acted like they did not help Ashton-Tate any. In fact, his attitude was that the other database companies were taking money from his pockets. But ask yourself, “Who makes the software decisions in most small companies, and several large companies?” The consultants, right? How many companies have you entered where they asked you for advice on which software product to use? I know I have several that have asked me, including some Fortune 100 companies.

But Mr. Ed didn’t look at it this way. He refused to support the development community. So how could we support dBASE IV, a product that didn’t work?

2. Insulting the big corporations - Mr Ed’s feeling about Dbase was that the big corporations would buy it just because it was sold by Ashton-Tate. Big mistake - big, big mistake.

3. Insulting the competition - the lawsuit against Fox software - Instead of saying to Fox, and other developers of an Xbase product “Go ahead, use our product and our file structure. When you sell product, that just helps our foundation.” Mr. Ed in essence said, “It’s mine. You cannot play with it.”

The advent of third party products for Dbase is probably the main reason that Dbase has survived for so long. Take away the perks, and you are left with nothing.

Continued on Page 5.

The Newsletter of the Dbase Language Professional Developers Group, October 1990

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