Ashton-Tate Corp was showing its version of dBase IV for Sun Microsystems Inc workstations on the stand at Unix Expo West in Los Angeles last week, along with a version of the MultiMate word processor running under Unix by courtesy of the XDOS translation program from Hunter Systems Inc. And at the DECus DEC user group meeting in New Orleans, the company revealed a beta test version of dBase IV for VAX/VMS Systems. dBase IV for Sun is not out yet, despite the fact that Ashton-Tate claims to have dBase running on at least five different Unix systems in-house – one of them thought to be for DEC’s Ultrix system, and another for SCO Unix. It appears the new release must wait for the launch of the debugged version of dBase IV, release 1.1, before it appears, an event expected during the next month. DBase IV is currently character-based, but Ashton-Tate is working on a graphics version of the product, but senior product manager Ken Rhie would not commit to a timescale. The product will support Sybase and other databases in future releases, he said. Ashton-Tate was also emphasising the role of Interbase Software Corp in its future dBase plans – it became the majority shareholder at Interbase in April 1989. Interbase is likely to play a key role in future dBase releases for the Unix and minicomputer market. Other likely Unix systems for dBase IV are thought to be Hewlett Apollo workstations and NCR hardware.
