dBase has evolved into a modern object oriented language that runs on 32 bit Windows. It can be used to build a wide variety of applications including web apps hosted on a Windows server, Windows rich client applications, and middleware applications. dBase can access most modern database engines via ODBC drivers.
dBase features an IDE with a Command Window and Navigator, a just in time compiler, a preprocessor, a virtual machine interpreter, a linker for creating dBase application .exe's, a freely available runtime engine, and numerous two-way GUI design tools including a Form Designer, Report Designer, Menu Designer, Label Designer, Datamodule Designer, SQL Query Designer, and Table Designer. Two-way Tools refers to the ability to switch back and forth between using a GUI design tool and the Source Code Editor. Other tools include a Source Code Editor, a Project Manager that simplifies building and deploying a dBase application, and an integrated Debugger. dBase features structured exception handling and has many built-in classes that can be subclassed via single inheritance.
There are visual classes, data classes, and many other supporting classes. Visual classes include Form, SubForm, Notebook, Container, Entryfield, RadioButton, SpinBox, ComboBox, ListBox, PushButton, Image, Grid, ScrollBar, ActiveX, Report, ReportViewer, Text, TextLabel and many others. Database classes include Session, Database, Query, Rowset, Field, StoredProc and Datamodule classes. Other classes include File, String, Math, Array, Date, Exception, Object and others. dBase objects can be dynamically subclassed by adding new properties to them at runtime.
The current version of dBase, dBase Plus, is not compatible with any previous DOS version, including the latest dBase V
dBase was the first widely used database management system or DBMS for microcomputers, published by Ashton-Tate for CP/M, and later on the Apple II, Apple Macintosh, UNIX[1], VMS[2], and IBM PC under DOS where it became one of the best-selling software titles for a number of years. dBase was slow to transition successfully to Microsoft Windows and gradually lost market share to competitors such as Paradox, Clipper, FoxPro, and Microsoft Access. dBase was sold to Borland in 1991, which sold the rights to the product line in 1999 to the newly-formed dBase Inc. In 2004, dBase Inc. changed its name to dataBased Intelligence, Inc.
Starting in the mid 1980s many other companies produced their own dialects or variations on the product and language. These included FoxPro (now Visual FoxPro), Arago, Force, dbFast, dbXL, Quicksilver, Clipper, Xbase++, FlagShip, Recital's Terminal Developer, and Harbour/XHarbour. Together these are informally referred to as xBase.
dBase's underlying file format, the .dbf file, is widely used in many other applications needing a simple format to store structured data.
A major legacy of dBase is its .dbf file format, which has been adopted in a number of other applications. For example, the shapefile format developed by ESRI for spatial data in a geographic information system uses .dbf files to store feature attribute data. The term XBase is often used for the group of applications.
dBase's database system was one of the first to provide a header section for describing the structure of the data in the file. This meant that the program no longer required advance knowledge of the data structure, but rather could ask the data file how it was structured.
A second filetype is the .dbt file format for memo fields. While character fields are limited to 254 characters each, a memo field is a 10-byte pointer into a .dbt file which can include a much larger text field. dBase was very limited in its ability to process memo fields, but some other xBase languages such as Clipper treat memo fields as strings just like character fields for all purposes except permanent storage.
dBase uses .ndx files for indexes. Some xBase languages include compatibility with .ndx files while others use different file formats such as .ntx used by Clipper and .cdx used by FoxPro.
This is a full version of dBase IIIPlus from 1987 or 1988. Download the file, unzip it to a folder and run DBASE.EXE . Tough it is more than 20 years old dBase IIIPlus is Y2K compatible and you can run it in Windows. If you´re not familiar with dBase IIIPlus check Wikipedia for more information. Enjoy it!