An interactive DBMS, originally from Ashton-Tate Corporation, and the language used by it. dBASE evolved from Vulcan by Wayne Ratliffe, which came out in around 1980 and ran on CP/M. It was called dBaseII when sold to Ashton-Tate Corporation. The first release was dBASE II, ca 1980. There never was a "dBASE I". Later versions included: dBASE III, dBASE III+, and dBASE IV. Ashton-Tate was taken over in the early 1990s by what became Borland Software Corporation who sold dBase in March(?) 1999 to the newly formed dBase Inc. dBase Inc' s first release was Visual dBASE 5.7, a Y2K upgrade to Visual dBASE 5.x. Current version, as of 2003-11-24: dBASE PLUS 2.0x build 1703. dBase Start . (2003-11-24)