[HN Gopher] The Rise and Fall of Ashton-Tate (2023)
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The Rise and Fall of Ashton-Tate (2023)
Author : jasim
Score : 65 points
Date : 2024-12-12 18:32 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abortretry.fail)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abortretry.fail)
| pvg wrote:
| A related discussion from 2013
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6426540
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _The Rise and Fall of Ashton-Tate_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36257178 - June 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Rise, Fall and Survival of Ashton-Tate 's dBASE_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6426540 - Sept 2013 (25
| comments)
| ddgflorida wrote:
| I remember those times well, particularly all the clones - i.e.
| Foxpro. Dbase was a great idea but I sure hated the language
| used. Paradox and Access were clearly superior.
| bombcar wrote:
| We've really kind of "lost" the end-user database. I played
| with an older version of Access and was blown away by how user-
| friendly and capable it was compared to just doing things in
| spreadsheets.
|
| Losing Access and similar things has lead to Salesforce being a
| billion dollar company; when it's basically AccessOnline(tm).
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Looks like FileMaker is still around, or do they somehow not
| count as end-user db?
| fzzzy wrote:
| It's still around, but do you ever hear of anyone using it?
| For some reason that style of ui has fallen out of favor. I
| have fond memories of FileMaker.
| kstrauser wrote:
| It costs like $500 per user per year now. I'm sure that
| doesn't help.
| burningChrome wrote:
| I used to work at a bike shop where they went 100% Apple
| products. All the POS machines were macs. The entire
| company was mainly run with Filemaker Pro, which is pretty
| impressive when you think at the time, the company had over
| 10 shops.
|
| They had one IT guy that managed everything and I remember
| him saying it was either going to be Apple or some Linux
| distro and by using Apple for all their stuff, it greatly
| reduced the amount spent on tons of other IT stuff that he
| would have to deal with if it were Windows based.
| vondur wrote:
| We have a "system" that I have to support that is used here
| in a Higher Education institution. It's relatively cheap
| for EDU pricing.
| breadwinner wrote:
| There are new alternatives that are basically
| AccessOnline(tm), see https://visualdb.com
| bonzini wrote:
| Many of them are paid by the number of records, you
| basically cannot do many to many relationships.
| the_arun wrote:
| > We've really kind of "lost" the end-user database.
|
| How? Aren't Google & Excel Spreadsheets end user databases?
| bombcar wrote:
| People _use_ spreadsheets as databases, but they 're really
| not.
|
| If you've never used a tool like Access, it's hard to
| explain just how powerful it really is for ordinary people.
| gmueckl wrote:
| This. Access is a very powerful package to quickly slap
| down a structured data model with data entry forms and
| report generators. The benefit is that it automatically
| guarantees consistency in data entry and processing.
| Spreadsheets are notoriously bad at enforcing structure.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Not only that, but JET (the database engine) also integrated
| into Visual Basic and C++. I was using MDBs in applications
| long before SQLite3 became a thing.
| zie wrote:
| LibreOffice has one built-in. I don't know anyone that uses
| it though, which is sad, because it seems to work fine.
|
| It seems we have decided to go the SaaS route instead and you
| get online only things that sort of play at Access, but "with
| cloud".
| jdougan wrote:
| But that can be done better. I miss DabbleDB.
|
| https://youtu.be/MCVj5RZOqwY
| criddell wrote:
| My first paid programming jobs were writing Clipper
| applications for small businesses around the city I lived in. I
| have very fond memories of the work, the people, and the
| equipment I worked on (XT clone with a floppy drive then after
| I made some money, an AT clone with a 20 MB hard drive).
| burnte wrote:
| I made a good amount of money moving people from dBase to
| Access.
| neverartful wrote:
| FoxPro was a real treat! It was well polished and lightning
| fast.
| Max-q wrote:
| MS Access was a very solid product when it came out. dBase had no
| chance.
| thinkling wrote:
| By the time Access came out, Ashton Tate had already declined
| and been swallowed up by Borland.
| davidw wrote:
| I seem to recall they get a mention in this book:
| https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4302-0813-6
|
| It's a fun read, although it goes a bit off the rails at the end,
| crapping on Linux and open source.
| gonzus wrote:
| Long live Clipper -- one of my first paid gigs. Amazing platform
| to write (compiled!) console-based applications with a DB living
| locally or on a networked drive. Something which does not exist
| anymore as a market.
| neverartful wrote:
| Same here. I really enjoyed working with Clipper. The fun ran
| out when my application was bursting through the available
| memory though. It would be nice to have a 64 bit
| linux/macos/windows Clipper-like compiler.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Well that exists Harbour https://harbour.github.io
| neverartful wrote:
| Yeah, I know about it. However every time I've tried to use
| it I ran into all kinds of problems.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Same here, good memories, compiling took up to 30 minutes, so
| during compiling we always went for a game of billiards. Coming
| back you found out that the compilation had crashed after 5
| minutes, fix bug and start the same routine.
| vasac wrote:
| I don't recall compilation being slow. The Clipper app for
| small businesses that my father created used overlays because
| it couldn't fit in memory, yet compilation was still fast
| (all of this was happening on an XT). Linking, on the other
| hand, was painfully slow, but one could use Turbo Linker if
| overlays weren't needed--TL was unbelievably fast. Later,
| Blinker came along. It was slower than TL but offered
| excellent support for overlays (and a bunch of other useful
| features) while still being much faster than MS Linker.
| fuzztester wrote:
| XBase / Foxpro / Clipper apps are probably still used in India,
| widely, in small department stores, grocery stores, factories,
| medical stores, etc.
|
| They are much faster to operate and more efficient for CRUD
| type apps then GUI based ones.
| myth2018 wrote:
| Same in Brazil. And users love them.
| achairapart wrote:
| Also, there were a ton of very powerful third-party libraries
| too!
| pumplekin wrote:
| My memories of Ashton-Tate are weirdly the non-dbase products,
| mostly the ones the acquired.
|
| I specifically remember Multimate, the Word Processor, and
| Framework, the "office suite" I guess.
|
| But dbase was 90%+ of what Ashton-Tate did so the success of that
| made of broke the company.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Yes, I remember Multimate -- it had a very weird user interface
| but that was because it was designed to be similar to the
| dedicated Wang word processors of the late 1970s/early 1980s.
| When I was working in a university library in the 1980s the
| staff all used Multimate because they had recently gotten PCs
| to replace their Wang word processors and wanted something
| familiar.
| Pamar wrote:
| Framework!!!
| reaperducer wrote:
| I loved Framework. The ultimate DOS shell, and so very very
| much more.
|
| All the capability of Mac OS, but with the speed and hotkeys
| of a department store POS system. I don't know if it had a
| graphic component, because I ran it on an IBM XT with an MDA
| display.
|
| I tried to find Framework disks online a few years ago so I
| could relive it under DOSBox, but came up empty.
| yardshop wrote:
| My first few programming jobs were in dBASE, the last of which
| saw the use of dBASE go on for 15 years or so. It was a weird
| language but still capable of quite a lot. I learned some
| assembly language with the help of Peter Norton and had a few
| neat little addons for my dBASE code.
|
| I tried to transition my company to Borland dBASE 5 when it came
| out but there was too much to try to upgrade all at once. I was
| really excited about a lot of the language improvements, and the
| fact that it was now coming from a real language company, but it
| was too much too late. A few years later my company moved to
| different software altogether and dBASE was just a (mostly) fond
| memory.
|
| My most productive use of it was with the Topaz library for Turbo
| Pascal from Software Science. They provided a much more powerful
| UI capability than one could get from "@ 1,1 say ..." with drop
| down lists and moveable windows etc. It was still all character
| mode DOS stuff, but we had the whole menagerie running in Windows
| for Workgroups for a good while. Those were fun days.
| chasil wrote:
| I was actually tasked with pulling a customer list out of dBASE
| 2 on CP/M that had 8" floppy disks (in addition to the hard
| drive).
|
| I managed to do it by configuring the serial port as the
| printer, at 9600/n/8/1.
|
| I used a null modem into my laptop, and captured the output
| with Procomm.
|
| Fun times.
| yardshop wrote:
| Ha, funny! I did something very similar when we moved from
| old NEC APCs with 8" floppies to brand new IBM PC XTs and
| ATs! The consultants wanted something like $200 per disk to
| convert them. I was able to rig up a serial cable and a tiny
| Turbo Pascal program to send files from one machine to
| another. A couple cheap cable ends from Radio Shack and some
| spare phone wire from the basement was all it needed!
|
| The serial printer port trick is very clever too. I don't
| think my transfer was as fast as 9600. Good job!
| chasil wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| "The consultants wanted something like $200 per disk to
| convert them."
|
| As P.T. Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute.
| Your coworkers hopefully thanked you for letting that be
| the next guy.
|
| Edit: he might not have said it.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_eve
| r...
| coldcode wrote:
| I remember going to the Apple Developer's Conference in 1986 (Nob
| Hill Hilton I think) and seeing the A-T gang (they brought more
| people than anyone else) wearing matching leather jackets.
| achairapart wrote:
| Found this old Wayne Ratliff' interview in a 1984 PC-MAG
| issue[0]. PC: What is this "big picture"?
| RATLIFF: I have to be a little careful about what I answer. It's
| probably safe to say Artificial Intelligence. PC:
| How would you define Artificial Intelligence?
| RATLIFF: One way to define Artificial Intelligence is "making
| computers easier to use." However, we don't Just want to make
| them five percent easier to use, want to make them dramatically
| easier to use. We are looking for a breakthrough. Eventually,
| what we want Artificial Intelligence to do is to take over
| mechanical duties, to free people for non-mechanical things. I
| want to see computers in my lifetime -- preferably in my hand --
| performing chores in a human, nonrigid, easy-to-use way. I'd like
| to be able to tell the computer, "Go and total all the checks I
| wrote in the last 10 years for medical expenses." That's a
| nonrigid request. PC: Do you foresee that dBASE II
| will be a nucleus for an artificially intelligent system?
|
| ...
|
| [0]: https://archive.org/details/PC-
| Mag-1984-02-07/page/n135/mode...
| kstrauser wrote:
| Probably my closest claim to fame was when I wrote a little
| utility, "pgdbf", that reads binary xBase files and writes out
| .sql files you can pipe into the psql command to turn them into
| PostgreSQL tables. I wrote it because my work needed it. Long
| story. Anyway, I asked my boss if I could release it under the
| GPLv3 and he agreed to it.
|
| I was utterly gobsmacked to find that it became pretty popular in
| South America, where Visual FoxPro was wildly popular in some
| fields. VFP users were left with gigabytes of data in xBase and
| weren't sure how to easily get it into a "big" database. Someone
| found my little project and it spread like wildfire, to the point
| that I got invited to a few conferences to speak about it. I
| wasn't able to go at the time because of life reasons, but one of
| my minor regrets was not going to Brazil to talk to a roomful of
| people who somehow, some way, all decided that I'd written a
| roadmap to get them out of a pickle.
|
| Thanks, Ashton-Tate. I have some fun stories to tell due to your
| inventions.
| worik wrote:
| Nearly 20 years old, but a catchup for Wayne Ratliff
|
| https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2007/08/01/life-af...
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