Ashton-Tate watch, part 2. (Industry News)

Ashton-Tate Watch, Part 2

With more feet than a centipede, Ashton-Tate has a lot of shoes to drop. The latest batch came just as we thought Ashton-Tate had a handle on their problems (see "Ashton-Tate Watch," August 1989). Products continue to be delayed, dBASE has been split, the staff has been cut and developers conference postponed, and losses have been mounting. Despite our repeated attempts, CEO/Chairman/President Ed Esber declined to speak with Data Based Advisor about these new developments at Ashton-Tate. The most important news for developers is that dBASE IV 1.1, originally promised for early 1989, is still not available in the third quarter. In fact, no ship date is promised. To help simplify the job of getting dBASE IV 1.1 out, it won't, after all, include support for the Ashton-Tate/Microsoft/Sybase SQL Server that runs under OS/2. That will come next year in a separate version called dBASE IV Server Edition. By splitting dBASE IV Ashton-Tate hopes to release the more needed features sooner. The current goal, apparently difficult to achieve, is to produce a solid version of dBASE IV for standard DOS and related network environments. The timeframe for the dBASE Professional Compiler, once targeted for Spring 1989, is still unknown.

dBASE IV 1.1 will use DOS extender technology to squeeze more features into 286 and 386 machines. This is the same approach (and extender product) used by Lotus in 1-2-3 Release 3. Version 1.1 will remove most restrictions on user-defined …