Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy!hacgate!ashtate!dbase!awd
From: awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: dBASE II-III+ loss of functionality
Summary: @..SAY to a file is back in dBASE IV
Message-ID: <6@dbase.UUCP>
Date: 31 Jan 89 18:10:36 GMT
References: <19695@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Ashton Tate Devlopment Center Glendale, Calif.
Lines: 31




You can direct @..SAYs to a file, printer or screen in dBASE IV.  I'm not
sure why the ability was not present in dBASE III, but I was hired around
the time III was written and I know that the original two or three 
dBASE II authors were outnumbered by the five or six people, like me,
who didn't know the details of dBASE but were hired to help rewrite it
in C.  The core programmers that wrote dBASE IV have a lot more history
with dBASE and its users and we're more sensitive, I think.  We're all
hard at work on an even better dBASE IV right now.

If there's anything else that bothers anyone about dBASE, please post it.
I hear a lot of "dBASE is buggy" or "dBASE is slow" which are rather hard
to substantiate, let alone do anything about.  A lot of product 
acceptance seems to turn on feelings and attitudes instead of technical
merit--I'm sure there are lots of good programming editors, for example,
but I like mine too much to consider them.  Looking at the numbers, though,
dBASE is turning into a COBOL* that's going to be around forever--Ashton-Tate
estimates that there are 5 million people using the dBASE language, making
it the second most popular computer language in history.  I think some
future version of dBASE is going to give you the kind of "real DBMS"
power you want, but in a dBASE context.  If you expect to use DBMS
software for a while, here's your chance to influence its development.

/alastair/

These opinions are mine; Ashton-Tate doesn't know I'm on UseNet.

*This is not to imply that dBASE is or is not a generic public domain
language--I don't care to express an opinion on that at this time.