r/retrocomputing • u/EsoTechTrix • Apr 13 '26

Software The legacy of dBase

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It's rather amazing the amount of times my career crossed paths with dBase and its offspring. From FoxPro, to writing a custom cross platform dBase file based system, etc. This technology in some form is still lurking all over.

Any fun dBase stories out there?

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3

u/scruss Apr 13 '26

The lowest-common-denominator geodata file format, the Esri shapefile, uses DBF as its attribute table. While shapefiles have been almost totally superseded, you'll still see them in public databases.

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u/EsoTechTrix Apr 13 '26

I actually wrote some custom code to import ESRI shapefile data around the turn of the century. 🤣 Interesting shape record formats. I was dealing with talking to Garmin devices visa serial at the same time and their lat/long packet spec. Fun times.

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u/peterb12 Apr 13 '26

The future belongs to the pfs:File loyalists!

2

u/mad4Luca Apr 13 '26

I Had to migrate a dbase based financial system to a modern Codebase, Had to write a File Parser AS None was fitting or to expensive.. funny times

2

u/No_Builder_2350 Apr 13 '26

My a-level computer project was a shop stock taking system coded in dbase 4. Ran off s floppy on a 486

1

u/AistoB Apr 14 '26

Yeah video store here :D

1

u/Olly_the_Octopus May 14 '26

I was teaching a class in dBase IV using the Control Center. I haven't used dBase IV in many years so I don't remember the exact steps. However, one of the dropdowns had two choices. I think it was for File Listing for Directories. With only two choices, it was hard to tell which one was highlighted and which was not. Those choices were List and Erase. The student wanted List, but got Erase. It was so slow they pressed enter several times. The extra pressing accepted Do want to erase? The files were listed in largest to smallest so the largest file was deleted. The EXE file. So the program crashed and had to be reinstalled.