dBASE II v2.x

Ashton-Tate dBase was an early popular database management system for CP/M and MS-DOS. It was regarded as one of the killer applications for CP/M, and achieved good success. At the time of conception Ashton-Tate was a garage based company but quickly grew.

In 1982, enjoying large success on CP/M, dBASE II was ported to DOS and the IBM PC. By the start of 1984 dBASE II had retained about 70% of the computer database market with over 150,000 copies sold.

In 1988, after years of promises to rewrite, Ashton-Tate released dBASE IV. This version would be seen as its downfall, as it was slow, buggy, slow, incompatible, slow, and unable to compete against newer SQL offerings. It was eventually sold to Borland in 1991, who then continued to sell dBase III Plus as well as IV. Many dBASE developers would eventually start working in the closely related Fox Software / Microsoft FoxPro system.

Ashton-Tate also released a Macintosh database under the dBase name, called "dBase Mac". It was acquired from another company and was not directly related to the DOS dBase product, although it had reportedly been considered as a basis for a new DOS rewrite instead of dBase IV.

Wanted: dBase III Plus distributed by Borland.



Screenshots

Release notes

dBase II is a relational database application. Despite the "II" in the name, dBase II was the first version of the dBase product.

Product type
Application Database
Vendor
Ashton-Tate
Release date
1983
Minimum CPU
8088
User interface
Text
Platform
DOS
Download count
124 (29 for release)

Downloads

Download name Version Language Architecture File size Downloads
dBase II 2.35 for CPM-80 [Zenith Z-100] II 2.35 for CPM-80 English 64.97KB 2
dBase II 2.3D for DOS (5.25-160k) II 2.3D for DOS English 8.3MB 2
dBase II 2.4 for CPM-86 (1983) [DEC Rainbow] (5.25-SSQD) 2.4 for CP/M-86 English 11.2MB 2
dBase II 2.4 for DOS (5.25-160k) II 2.4 for DOS English 819.36KB 3
dBase II 2.4 for DOS [Seimens PC-D] (5.25-DSQD) II 2.4 for DOS [Seimens PC-D] English 63.17KB 2
dBase II 2.4 for DOS [Tandy 2000] (5.25-DSQD) II 2.4 for DOS [Tandy 2000] English 11.54MB 2
dBase II 2.40 for CPM-80 II 2.40 for CPM-80 English 94.21KB 2
dBase II 2.41 for CPM-86 II 2.41 for CPM-86 English 186.97KB 2
dBase II 2.43 for CPM-80 [Kaypro OEM] II 2.43 for CPM-80 [Kaypro OEM] English 113KB 2
dBase II 2.43 for DOS (1984) (5.25-360k) II 2.43 for DOS English 10.06MB 2
dBase II 2.43 for DOS Manual (1984) II 2.43 for DOS English 81.61MB 3
dBase II 2.4A r01 for NEC APC (8-inch) II 2.4A r01 for NEC APC English 9.68MB 2
dBase II On-Disk Tutorial (1983) (5.25-160k) II English 26.62MB 3

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