DBase+

DBase+ is the name under which language lists record dBASE Plus, the 32-bit Windows version of dBASE that replaced dB2K in 2002 and was sold under the Plus name until 2019. Its programming language is dBL, the object-oriented descendant of the xBase command language that Ashton-Tate’s dBASE II and dBASE III made famous. dBL kept the old USE, SKIP and ? commands working while adding classes, inheritance, events and an object model for data. dBASE Plus outlived two of its three corporate owners and ran from version 2.0 to version 12. It matters as the place where the original dBASE language kept running on Windows long after its rivals had been discontinued.

History & Origins

From Visual dBASE to dB2K

Borland gave dBASE an object-oriented language in the mid-1990s, from dBASE for Windows 5.0 (1994) through the 32-bit Visual dBASE 7 (1997). In March 1999 Borland, then renamed Inprise, handed the product to KSoft Inc., whose subsidiary dBASE Inc. released Visual dBASE 7.5 and then, in December 2000, dB2K. The dB2K release named the language dBL after a public contest, and introduced DEO (Dynamic External Objects), a way of loading compiled objects from a network share at run time. The full story is on the DBase 2000 page.

The Plus name (2002)

On 6 February 2002 dBASE Inc. opened a “Name That Product!” contest because, in its words, “dB2K needs a new name”. The answer came on 1 July 2002: a press release from Vestal, New York, announced dBASE Plus as the company’s new flagship, to ship that summer. CTO Alan A. Katz called it “the SUV of database tools” because it was meant to serve “everyone from the interactive end-user to the business person to the database professional and application developer.”

The version numbers continued from dB2K, not from 1.0. The first release was dBASE PLUS 2.0. dBase’s present download page lists a “dBASE PLUS Runtime Version 2.01”, build 1703, with a date of 22 January 2002. That is earlier than the Plus name, so the 2.0x numbering probably began inside the dB2K builds. This page has not confirmed exactly when dBASE Plus 2.0 first shipped. The company’s product page from late 2002 described a release that added:

• SubForms, a visual class for “windows within windows”
• finer control of grid fonts, colours and borders
• a new graphical Project Manager written in dBL
• multi-select file dialogs, Avery label printing, an Animate class and an Explorer class
• dQuery II, a reworked version of the drag-and-drop data environment

dBASE Inc. and dataBased Intelligence (2002–2012)

Point releases came quickly at first. The dBASE PLUS 2.02 public Gold beta was posted on 19 March 2003. Version 2.2 is dated 31 December 2003 and 2.21 is dated 25–27 March 2004 (the features page and the runtime download page differ by two days).

In June 2004 the company was reorganised. A 23 June 2004 letter from new president Larry Foster apologised to customers for “not communicating to you sooner” about “fundamental financial, geographical and organizational changes”. In August 2004 dBASE Inc. became dataBased Intelligence, Inc. (dBI), which shipped:

Version 2.61 bundled branded DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase ASE, DB2, Informix, FoxPro, Clipper and Pervasive SQL. The help file says these drivers handled the network traffic themselves, so client machines no longer needed the extra database communications software that the BDE SQL Links required.

dBase, LLC (2012–2019)

In 2012 a group of investors and former dBI staff formed dBase, LLC, based in the Binghamton area of New York (its 2013 website gave a post-office box in nearby Oxford), to take over the product. Its press releases describe it as created “by a group of investors, experienced technology leaders and former employees of dataBased Intelligence, Inc.” Under president and CEO Mike Rozlog the company dropped the “2.” from the version numbers and moved to a release roughly every year:

• dBASE PLUS 8 (2013): Windows 8 and Server 2012 support, ADO connectivity alongside the Borland Database Engine, high-precision math, callbacks, a redesigned SQL builder, bundled ActiveX controls and a new look for the IDE. Its help file notes that it installed to a separate Plus8 folder and registry key so that it could run alongside dBASE Plus 2.8. Version 8.1 extended the multi-language support, offering German, Japanese, Italian and Spanish as well as English.
• dBASE PLUS 9 (announced 18 June 2014): a new source editor with dComplete code completion, dBlocks snippets, dLocator search, syntax highlighting for HTML, XML, SQL and JavaScript, and source export to HTML, RTF and PDF.
• dBASE PLUS 10 (announced 21 July 2015): a compiler “rebuilt from the ground up”, a rewritten debugger (“dBugger”), native data-aware Grid and ListView components that the company called “the first new components in 15 years”, and an embedded runtime for building a single-file .exe.
• dBASE PLUS 11 (announced 14 December 2016): touch and tablet support, plus a set of “Assist” tools for data modules (dmAssist, dmWeB, dmOutput, dmC.R.U.D.).
• dBASE PLUS 12 (announced 21 May 2018): native JSON support built into dBL and a RichEdit component. Mike Rozlog promoted it as “the original Low / No code environment”.

The last release under the Plus name was 12.3.1, dated 15 October 2018. On 19 July 2019 dBase, LLC announced dBASE 2019 as its successor. The Plus name has not been used for a new release since.

Design Philosophy

dBASE Plus was sold as two products in one box. For end users it offered drag-and-drop tools: dQuery, “No-Click” reports, and “One-Click” generators for Windows and web applications. For developers it offered a full object-oriented language with which those tools had themselves been written. The 2002 product page summed up that progression as “Start with simple, graphic, drag-and-drop data. Graduate to one of the most robust, fully object-oriented programming languages around.”

Three ideas run through the design:

1. Backward compatibility with xBase. Code written for dBASE III or dBASE IV, with commands such as USE, SKIP, REPLACE and ?, still compiles and runs. The procedural language was extended rather than replaced.
2. Two-way tools. The form, report and menu designers write ordinary dBL class definitions, and edits made in the source editor are read back into the designers, so visual and hand-written changes can be mixed.
3. Royalty-free deployment. Applications compile to bytecode object files and run on a freely distributable runtime engine. From version 10 that runtime could be embedded in a single executable.

Key Features

A class-based dynamic language

dBL is dynamically typed. Classes are declared with CLASS ... ENDCLASS. Constructor code sits directly after the CLASS line, and methods are FUNCTION blocks inside the class. Properties can be added to any object at run time, and the press material for dB2K, the immediate predecessor, compared the language with JavaScript. A small example:

local p
p = new Person("Ada")
? p.greet()

class Person(cName)
   this.name = cName

   function greet
      return "Hello, " + this.name
endclass

Forms are classes too. A form designed visually is saved as a .wfm file that contains a dBL class derived from Form, and it can be edited by hand.

Object-oriented data access alongside xBase commands

The Query, Rowset, Field and Database classes give an object model for tables, while the old work-area commands remain available. The two styles can be mixed:

// xBase style
use customer
? customer->name
skip

// Object style
q = new Query()
q.sql = "select * from customer"
q.active = true
do while not q.rowset.endOfSet
   ? q.rowset.fields["name"].value
   q.rowset.next()
enddo

Data access originally went through the Borland Database Engine (BDE), covering .dbf and Paradox tables and, through SQL Links or ODBC, server databases. dBASE PLUS 8 added a parallel set of ADO classes. The original 2002 announcement listed compatibility with dBASE, Paradox, Access, SQL Server, InterBase, Informix, DB2, Oracle, Sybase and ODBC data sources.

Data modules

A data module (.dmd) bundles queries, master–detail links and business rules into one reusable object. Forms and reports can share the same module. Later releases built most of their productivity tools around it: dmAssist designed data modules, dmOutput exported their data, dmC.R.U.D. generated a starter application from one, and dmWeB served one to the web.

DEO: Dynamic External Objects

Inherited from dB2K, DEO lets a runtime application load compiled objects from a shared folder or server instead of from inside its executable. Replacing one object file on the server updates every application that uses it. In 2002 dBASE Inc. described this as needing “no middleware”.

Development environment

Across the life of the product the IDE gained a Form Designer, Report Designer, Menu Designer, Table Designer, SQL Designer, Project Explorer with Inno Setup integration, a source-level debugger, and in version 9 a code-completing editor. Version 8 added several bundled ActiveX components and broader ActiveX and OLE automation support.

Evolution

The language did not go through any break comparable to the move from dBASE IV to Visual dBASE. Each release kept old code running and added classes, properties and tools on top. The jump from 2.8 to 8 in 2013 was a change of numbering, not of language.

Current Relevance

dBASE Plus itself is discontinued as a product name, which is why it is listed here as historical. dBase, LLC’s update page still offers patches and runtimes for earlier releases back to 2.x. Its language continues unchanged in dBASE 2019, whose last full release on that page, 2019.2, is dated 18 February 2020. Ken Mayer’s dUFLP library and his dBASE tutorials, still updated in 2024–2026, mark each item by the dBASE Plus version it requires.

dBase, LLC’s press releases from the period claimed that dBASE was “still used by millions of software developers and others in Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies worldwide.” No independent figures were found to support that claim, and it is given here only as the company’s own statement.

Why It Matters

dBASE Plus is the longest-lived branch of the dBASE family on Windows. It carried a language whose roots go back to JPLDIS and dBASE II into the era of ADO, JSON and touchscreens without breaking old code along the way. Of the xBase products that once competed with it, Clipper and FoxPro were discontinued by their owners. dBASE Plus was still shipping new versions under its original vendor lineage in 2018.

It is also an example of a commercial language kept alive by a small company and its user community after its large corporate owner had given it up. Between 2002 and 2018 three successive small firms released more than a dozen numbered versions. Community libraries such as dUFLP were kept current through every one of them.

Sources and Caveats

• Release dates for 2.21 through 12.3.1 come from dBase, LLC’s Updates and Fixes page and from the dates embedded in patch filenames there. The 2.21 date appears as 25 March on the archived features page and as 27 March on the download page.
• The 2002 announcement, the 2.02 and 2.2 dates, the 2004 reorganisation letter and the 2002 feature list are from archived dbase.com pages (Docs/dbplusannounce.htm, Docs/FeaturesAndFixes.htm, Docs/newnews.htm, Docs/dBASEPlus.htm).
• Announcement dates for versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 and for dBASE 2019 are from dBase, LLC press releases (PRLog, PRZen and dbase.com). The dBASE PLUS 8 announcement date is not stated in its release text. The archived post carries a March 2013 timestamp, so only the year is given above.
• Not verified: the exact ship date of dBASE Plus 2.0 in 2002, the release date of 2.70.0 (only the 2.70.1 runtime date was found), and the new features of 2.5 and 2.62. The “millions of developers” figure is the vendor’s claim.