Wingz was a spreadsheet program sold by Informix in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Originally developed for the Macintosh , it was later ported to Microsoft Windows , OS/2 , NeXTSTEP and several other commercial flavors of Unix . In spite of many positive reviews, including one calling it "clearly the spreadsheet of the future", the market was rapidly entrenching Microsoft Excel . Informix eventually gave up on the desktop market and reverted solely to database sales in the mid-1990s. Claris licensed and sold an extensively cleaned up version as Claris Resolve in 1991, but it was far too late to market to have any effect.
69-429: Wingz may refer to: Informix Wingz , a spreadsheet program Wingz (company) , an American transportation network company See also [ edit ] Wings (disambiguation) Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Wingz . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change
138-425: A heart attack at the age of 40 on August 10, 1984. David Cole on October 29 announced his resignation and left for Ziff-Davis , leaving Ed Esber to become CEO. Cole hired Esber because he was the marketing expert who launched VisiCalc and who built the first distribution channels for personal computer software. (VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet and is credited for sparking the personal computer revolution and
207-662: A multinational corporation . Once one of the "Big Three" software companies, which included Microsoft and Lotus , the company stumbled in the late 1980s and was sold to Borland in September 1991. The history of Ashton-Tate and dBASE are intertwined and as such, must be discussed in parallel. In 1978, Martin Marietta programmer Wayne Ratliff wrote Vulcan, a database application , to help him make picks for football pools . Written in Intel 8080 assembly language , it ran on
276-611: A 7.8 (out of 10) score. As for the Windows version, InfoWorld gave a 6.8 (out of 10) score in July 1990. Ashton-Tate Ashton-Tate Corporation was a US -based software company best known for developing the popular dBASE database application and later acquiring Framework from the Forefront Corporation and MultiMate from Multimate International . It grew from a small garage-based company to become
345-405: A dBASE clone, shouting " Make my day! ". This sparked great debates about the ownership of computer languages and chants of "innovation not litigation". As a result of this continued conflict, the third-party community slowly moved some of their small business customers away from dBASE. Fortunately for Ashton-Tate, large corporations were standardizing on dBASE. Ashton-Tate had been promising
414-422: A dBASE project and compile it and link it into a stand-alone runnable program. This not only made the resulting project easy to distribute to end users, but it did not require dBASE to be installed on that machine. These compilers essentially replaced Ashton-Tate's own solution to this problem, a $ 395 per-machine "runtime" copy of dBASE, and thereby removed one source of their income. The most successful such compiler
483-530: A database (e.g., Filemaker Pro) or a dedicated Desktop Presentations application, although MacDraw Pro did provide some such features, they positioned it to compete against MS Office. The ClarisImpact program was released much later than ClarisOffice and was never included as part of the suite. MacUser in June 1989 gave Wingz 1.0 for Macintosh a 5 mice (out of 5) rating. InfoWorld in December 1989 gave Wingz 1.1
552-468: A group of sales and marketing employees left to join Ratliff at Migent Corporation to compete with Ashton Tate. Later (January 1987), Ashton-Tate would sue Migent for alleged misappropriation of trade secrets . Ratliff would eventually approach Esber about rejoining Ashton-Tate and insisting on reporting directly to him. Jeb Long took over as dBASE's main architect in Ratliff's absence. In October 1985
621-466: A new version of the core dBASE product line starting around 1986. The new version was going to be more powerful, faster, and easier to create databases with. It would have improved indexes and networking, support SQL internally as well as interacting with SQL Server , and include a compiler . Ashton-Tate announced dBASE IV in February 1988 with an anticipated release set for July of that year. dBASE IV
690-471: A project under Mike Benson to re-architect dBASE for the new world of client–server software. It was to be a complete rewrite, designed as the next generation dBASE. dBASE was a complex product, and a thriving third-party industry sprung up to support it. A number of products were introduced to improve certain aspects of dBASE, both programming and day-to-day operations. As Ashton-Tate announced newer versions of dBASE, they would often decide to include some of
759-464: A take-over of Ashton-Tate with a significant premium over Ashton-Tate's current market valuation but substantially below the price Esber had negotiated. Wall Street liked the deal and Borland stock would reach new highs shortly before and after the merger. Some considered the $ 439 million in stock they paid to be too much. Philippe Kahn , CEO of Borland, apparently did not consult with his management team prior to committing to acquire Ashton Tate over
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#1732776285510828-487: A version called the Ashton-Tate/Microsoft SQL Server also came to nothing, as Ashton-Tate's sales channels were not prepared to sell what was then a high-end database. The first version of SQL Server also only ran on IBM OS/2 , which also limited its success. A version of dBASE that communicated directly with SQL Server, called dBASE IV Server Edition, was released in 1990, and was reviewed as
897-532: A weekend visit to Los Angeles. The Borland merger was not a smooth one. Borland had been marketing the Paradox database specifically to compete with dBASE, and its programmers considered their system to be far superior to dBASE. The Paradox group was extremely upset whenever Kahn so much as mentioned dBASE, and an intense turf war broke out within the company. Borland was also developing a competitor product called The Borland dBase Compiler for Windows. This product
966-542: A wide variety of custom applications. Although microcomputers had limited memory and storage at the time, dBASE nevertheless allowed a huge number of small-to-medium-sized tasks to be automated. The value-added resellers (VARs) who developed applications using dBASE became an important early sales channel for dBASE. By the end of the fiscal year ending in January 1982, the firm had revenues of almost $ 3.7 million with an operating loss of $ 313,000. Among Cole's early acts
1035-757: The CP/M operating system and was modeled on JPLDIS , a Univac 1108 program used at JPL and written by fellow programmer Jeb Long. Ashton-Tate was launched as a result of George Tate and Hal Lashlee having discovered Vulcan from Ratliff in 1981 and licensing it (Ashton was Tate's after-the-fact parrot, whose cage was kept in his Culver City office) The original agreement was written on one page, and called for simple, generous royalty payments to Ratliff. Tate and Lashlee had already built three successful start-up companies , by that time - spring 1981. The three companies were: The first Software Store opened in May 1981. It
1104-549: The United States Department of Justice forced Borland to not assert ownership of the dBASE language.) In 1990 Esber proposed a merger with Borland. During the first discussions, the board backed out and dismissed Esber thinking him crazy to entertain a merger of equals (combining the companies at existing market valuations) with the smaller competitor Borland, and on February 11, 1991, replaced him as CEO with William P. "Bill" Lyons. Lyons had been hired to run
1173-425: The 1.0 release. If that had happened, the loyal users might have been more accepting of the product. Rather than do that, Ashton-Tate management instead turned their attention to the next generation of applications, code named Diamond . Diamond was to be a new, integrated product line capable of sharing large sets of data across applications. This effort had been underway for years and was already consuming many of
1242-689: The Macintosh by Innovative Software (publishers of the SmartWare Suite on the PC) based in Lenexa within Johnson County, Kansas ; and was ready for release in late 1988. Informix wanted to enter the desktop software market with products that could link to their back-end databases, and Wingz seemed like a good fit. They purchased the product and released it largely as-is in early 1989. The release
1311-591: The PC, and that fact, combined with good promotion and sales in the US and internationally, caused dBASE II sales to grow rapidly. Turner expanded Ashton-Tate's international distribution efforts and encouraged exclusive distributors in major markets to translate dBASE II from English to non-English versions. The early presence of dBASE II in international markets, as IBM rolled out the PC in those markets, facilitated rapid growth in sales and market share for dBASE. At one point in 1983,
1380-468: The Smart Spreadsheet, Wingz, Formula One VBX, Formula One ActiveX, Formula One for Java and SpreadsheetGear for .NET , left shortly after that. Future releases focused on bringing the product to new platforms as their GUI's matured, and adding functionality to HyperScript to allow it to directly interact with databases. Soon it was being marketed primarily as a data access tool, and eventually
1449-454: The Windows database market. Further, in the summer of 1992 Microsoft acquired Ohio-based Fox Software, makers of the dBASE-like products FoxBASE+ and FoxPro . With Microsoft behind FoxPro, many dBASE and Clipper software developers would start working in FoxPro instead. By the time dBASE for Windows was released, the market hardly noticed. Microsoft appears to have neglected FoxPro subsequent to
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#17327762855101518-422: The beginnings of a difficult to maintain legacy code base that would haunt the company for many years to come. This also had the side effect of making the program run somewhat slower, which was of some concern when it first shipped. As newer machines came out the problem was erased through increased performance of the hardware, and the "problem" simply went away. In fall 1984 the company had over 500 employees and
1587-847: The best available client for SQL Server (in both Databased Advisor and DBMS magazines), but the product never gained traction and was one of the casualties of the Borland acquisition. Microsoft eventually released Access in this role instead. Esber had been trying to grow the company for years via acquisitions or combining forces with other software companies, including merger discussions with Lotus in 1985 and again in 1989. Ashton-Tate's strategically inept board passed up numerous opportunities for industry-changing mergers. Other merger discussions that Ashton-Tate's board rejected or reached an impasse on included Cullinet , Computer Associates , Informix , Symantec and Microsoft . (Microsoft would later acquire Fox Software after Borland acquired Ashton-Tate and
1656-514: The chairman, president and CEO of their group of companies. The group was called "Software Plus". It did not trade under its own name, but was a holding company for the three startups: Discount Software, Software Distributors, and Ashton-Tate. Cole was given free rein to run the businesses, while George Tate primarily remained involved in Ashton-Tate. Lashlee was somewhat less involved on a day-to-day basis in Ashton-Tate by this time, although he
1725-446: The company released dBASE III Developer's Edition . Internally this release was known as version 1.2. It had some of the new features expected to be in the upcoming 2.0 release, including the new kernel and features primarily useful to application developers. Version 1.2 was one of the most stable dBASE versions that Ashton-Tate ever released, if not the most stable. It was also one of the least known and most often forgotten. Mostly, it
1794-473: The company's French distributor "La Commande Electronique" (whose owner was Hughes LeBlanc) claimed that "one in ten buyers of a PC in France is buying dBASE II." In the winter of 1982, Turner recruited the managing director (David Imberg, now David Inbar) for Ashton-Tate's first subsidiary, Ashton-Tate UK. Turner set a goal for Inbar of achieving 15% per month compound revenue growth in the first 18 months (using
1863-430: The company's first products released with copy protection schemes in an attempt to stop software piracy . dBASE III was the first release written in the C programming language to make it easier to support and port to other platforms. To facilitate the rewrite , an automatic conversion program was used to convert the original Vulcan code from CP/M Z-80 and DOS 8088 assembly language code into C, which resulted in
1932-409: The copy-protection scheme. However the company handled this with some aplomb, and although some customers were affected, Ashton-Tate's handling of the problems did much to improve customer relations rather than sour them. dBASE III+ would go on to be just as successful as dBASE II had been, powering the company to $ 318 million in sales in 1987. dBASE had grown unwieldy over the years, so Esber started
2001-757: The early 1990s after Informix lost interest in the Mac market. They updated it slightly with the addition of the Claris-standard UI (toolbars, color palettes, etc.) and released it as Resolve in 1991. By this time Excel was entrenched, and sales of Resolve were tiny. Claris never released a Resolve- MacWrite - Claris Impact bundle, and so were unable to gain a foothold in the high-end market now dominated by Microsoft Office . They eventually cancelled development in 1993, ending sales in 1994. Claris did offer an "Office suite", composed of MacWrite Pro, Claris Resolve, and MacDraw Pro. Although this suite didn't include
2070-582: The end of January 1983, the company was profitable. In February 1983 the company released dBASE II RunTime , which allowed developers to write dBASE applications and then distribute them to customers without them needing to purchase the "full" version of dBASE. The growth in revenue was matched by a growth in employees. The company hired its first Human Resources manager, put together its first benefits package, and moved headquarters to 10150 West Jefferson Boulevard in Culver City. In May 1983 Cole changed
2139-433: The features of Wingz — in-sheet graphics, large spreadsheets, etc. When it was finally released it was true many of these features were supported, but it was not considered user-friendly. It was only a short period of time before a Wingz 1.1 release fixed many of these issues, but it was long enough that the product was never able to regain its momentum. It also seemed that Informix never really understood how to market
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2208-455: The functionality provided by the third parties as features of the base system. Predictably, sales of the third-party version would instantly stop, whether or not the new version of dBASE actually included that feature. After a number of such vaporware announcements, third-party developers started becoming upset. One particularly important addition to the lineup of third-party add-ons was the eventual release of dBASE compilers , which would take
2277-401: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wingz&oldid=1053618108 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Informix Wingz Wingz was originally written solely for
2346-554: The name Wingz was dropped and the product became HyperScript Tools . After several years of ignoring it further, it was sold off to Investment Intelligence Systems in the UK . At some unknown point Wingz was bought by a company in San Jose, CA called PDF Solutions which now uses Wingz as a private base for their DataPOWER Semiconductor yield management software packages. Claris , Apple Computer 's onetime software arm, licensed Wingz in
2415-562: The name of the SPI holding company to be Ashton Tate, which put the company in the position of having a mail order company "Discount Software" and "Software Distributors" as subsidiaries. The newly renamed holding company promptly sold Discount Software and Software Distributors. Cole negotiated an agreement with Wayne Ratliff in which Ratliff exchanged his future royalty stream on dBASE into equity in Ashton Tate, thereby significantly increasing
2484-416: The non-dBASE business and heretofore had been unsuccessful. Lyons would ship dBASE IV 1.1, a product Esber managed and was already in beta when let go. After giving the board a merger compensation package (including individual bonuses of $ 250 thousand) and giving the management team repriced options and golden parachutes , the board and Lyons reinitiated discussions with Borland, but this time structured as
2553-460: The offices were so crowded that when Turner needed to conduct a confidential meeting, he would have it standing up in the nearby restroom. With the growing popularity of ever-larger hard drives on personal computers, dBASE II turned out to be a huge seller. For its time, dBASE was extremely advanced. It was one of the first database products that ran on a microcomputer, and its programming environment (the dBASE language) allowed it to be used to build
2622-416: The opportunity to try out the legions of dBASE clones that had appeared recently, notably FoxBase and Clipper . Sales of dBASE had plummeted. The company had about 63% of the overall database market in 1988, and only 43% in 1989. In the final four quarters as a company, Ashton-Tate lost close to $ 40 million. In August 1989, the company laid off over 400 of its 1,800 employees. The Microsoft partnership for
2691-554: The prior UK distributor's volume as a starting point), which Inbar accomplished. He subsequently expanded Ashton-Tate's operations across Europe with subsidiaries in Germany and the Netherlands. When Turner brought Inbar to the Culver City, California, corporate headquarters of Ashton-Tate to be trained, the offices were so crowded that the only space available for Inbar was a small desk beside a large photocopier, with no phone line;
2760-434: The problems. However a number of issues conspired to make the dBASE IV 1.0 release a disaster. Neither of these issues would, by themselves, kill the product. dBASE had an extremely large following and excellent name recognition. All that was needed was an update that addressed the problems. At the time of its release, there was a general consensus within Ashton-Tate that a bug-fix version would be released within six months of
2829-404: The product, and it is likely ' Not Invented Here ' played a major part in the problems as well — the purchase of Wingz and Smartware prompted Roger Sippl, one of the founders of Informix, to leave the company. Shortly after Sippl left, Phil White, the new CEO of Informix, announced that Informix would no longer be competing in the desktop application space. Joe Erickson, the lead developer of
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2898-476: The product. The video took attendees into "the future of spreadsheet design, past the legacy of failed old products [like Excel]". The most obvious feature, and the easiest to "checkbox review", was the size of the spreadsheets Wingz could process. Excel's maximum size was 256 columns by 16384 rows, while Wingz could handle spreadsheets up to 32768 in both directions. At the time spreadsheets were still being compared primarily on this feature. A less-obvious feature
2967-414: The profitability of the company. Cole also took steps to control its technology by creating an in-house development organization (headed by Harvey Jean, formerly of JPL, as VP engineering), and to diversify by funding two outside development teams: Forefront Corporation (the developer of the product that would later be named "Framework") and Queue Associates. That Spring, Ashton Tate released Friday! . By
3036-438: The resources in the company's Glendale, Torrance, Walnut Creek and Los Gatos (Northern California Product Center) offices. However, once it became apparent that Diamond was years away from becoming a product, and with poor reviews and slipping sales of dBASE IV 1.0, Ashton-Tate returned its focus to fixing dBASE IV. It was almost two years before dBASE IV 1.1 finally shipped (in July 1990). During this time many customers took
3105-526: The software is incomplete. There are 'problems' with dBASE—omissions for other software developers to fill". He noted that "If they weren't with us, they'd be against us", and Cole promised to always notify third parties before announcing a new product or changing dBase's marketing. In May the company announced, and in July shipped, dBASE III as the successor to dBASE II. July also saw the release of Framework , an integrated office suite developed by Forefront Corporation and funded by Ashton-Tate. These were
3174-504: The spreadsheets. At the time Excel offered an anemic variety of 2D graphs, and they could only be displayed in a separate view. Unlike the competitors at the time, Wingz also offered 3D graphs. Additionally Wingz made it easy to make the graphs and modify them, allowing you to see your changes in real-time directly in the spreadsheet where the changes were being made. At the time it was an "obvious" feature, but one that no other program had managed to make work correctly. A more hidden feature
3243-466: The time of the November 1983 IPO , the company had grown to 228 employees. The IPO raised $ 14 million. When the fiscal year ended in January 1984, revenues had more than doubled to $ 43 million and net income had jumped from $ 1.1 million (fiscal 1983) to $ 5.3 million. Such a market share would be the envy of Procter & Gamble or General Motors . By early 1984 InfoWorld estimated that Ashton-Tate
3312-558: The two developers who were employed at Ashton-Tate, while Wayne Ratliff employed Jeb Long from his royalty stream. dBASE II was ported to the IBM PC (i.e. the MS-DOS operating system) and shipped in September 1982. Pawluk ran advertisements promoting dBASE II for the IBM PC for months before it shipped. When dBASE II for the IBM PC shipped, it was one of few major applications available on
3381-673: Was Clipper , from Nantucket Software. Eventually a number of these were developed into full-blown dBASE clones. Esber was upset with the companies that cloned dBASE products but was always supportive of third-party developers, whom he viewed as an important part of the dBASE ecosystem. He neither believed nor supported companies that cloned dBASE, in the process leveraging the millions of dollars his shareholders had paid to market dBASE. Starting with minor actions, he eventually went to great lengths to stop cloners with cease-and-desist letters and threats of legal action. At one industry conference he even stood up and threatened to sue anyone who made
3450-447: Was HyperScript, a macro -programming language deliberately modelled on HyperCard 's HyperTalk . HyperScript allowed even new users to write fairly powerful macros, which could include user-interface features such as buttons and dialog boxes. HyperScript 1.0 was missing some rather obvious features. For instance it could not open another spreadsheet, although it could refer to one if the user opened that for it. A less hidden "feature"
3519-605: Was a release to appease developers waiting for 2.0 (dBASE III+). In late 1985 the company moved its headquarters to the final location at 20101 Hamilton Avenue in Torrance . Development was spread throughout California , although dBASE development was centered at the Glendale offices. dBASE III+ , a version including character-based menus for improved ease-of-use, had troubles maturing and had to be recalled just prior to its release in early 1986 due to an incorrect setting in
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#17327762855103588-488: Was a sophisticated financial modeling system that used its own internal language - but it was not as widely appealing as spreadsheets like SuperCalc . The Bottom Line Strategist was a template financial analysis system that had very limited flexibility and function. Both were released at the same price as dBASE II, but neither product was aggressively marketed, and both were put into a benign-neglect mode by Turner when it became clear that they did not have sizable potential. By
3657-410: Was already in its second version, and therefore would be perceived as being more reliable than a first release. The original manual was too complex from Pawluk's perspective, so he wrote a second manual, which was duly included in the package along with the first. Pawluk created the name for the new publishing company by combining George's last name with the fictional Ashton surname, purportedly because it
3726-499: Was always aware of and up to speed on all three of the businesses, and was an active board member and officer of SPI. In June 1982 Cole hired Rod Turner as the director of OEM sales for Ashton-Tate. In a few weeks Turner solved a sales commission plan issue, that had been bothering George Tate for some time, with the top performing salesperson (Barbara Weingarten-Guerra), and Tate and Cole promoted Turner to be Vice President of world-wide sales three weeks after his initial hire. Turner
3795-480: Was approximately the 12th employee of Ashton Tate. Since the company was truly boot-strapped , using no external venture capital , the founders did not make a practice of hiring experienced veterans, and most of the team at Ashton-Tate were young and enthusiastic, but inexperienced. Jim Taylor was responsible for product management in the early days, and worked closely with Wayne Ratliff and the other key developers on dBASE II. In 1982 Perry Lawrence and Nelson Tso were
3864-413: Was built up by extensive promotion on the part of Informix, including giving away a then-unprecedented array of "convention swag," including high quality Wingz red canvas tradeshow bags. For nearly a year, the buildup was focused around the "Wingz Time Shuttle," an enclosed theatre which traveled MacWorlds in 1988 and 1989. The focal creatives included a video narrated by Leonard Nimoy and automated demos of
3933-432: Was designed by Gregor Freund who led a small team developing this fast, object-oriented version of dBASE. It was when Borland showed the product to the Ashton-Tate team that they finally conceded that they had lost the battle for dBASE. Nevertheless, Kahn was observant of the trends in the computer market, and decided that both products should be moved forward to become truly Microsoft Windows -based. The OO-dBASE compiler
4002-455: Was eventually released in October 1988 as two products: Standard and Developer's editions. Unfortunately, dBASE IV was both slow and very buggy. Bugs are not at all that surprising in a major product update, something that would normally be fixed with a " dot-one " release before too much damage was done. This situation had occurred with dBASE III for instance, and Ashton-Tate had quickly fixed
4071-433: Was felt that "Ashton-Tate" sounded better, or was easier to pronounce, than "Lashlee-Tate". dBASE II had an unusual guarantee. Customers received a crippleware version of the software and a separate, sealed disk with the full version; they could return the unopened disk for a refund within 30 days. The guarantee likely persuaded many to risk purchasing the $ 700 application. In 1981 the founders hired David C. Cole to be
4140-427: Was later sold to Wayne Green Publishing, publisher of Byte Magazine . Vulcan was sold by SCDP Systems. The founders needed to change the name of the software, because Harris Corporation already had an operating system called Vulcan. Hal Pawluk, who worked for their advertising agency, suggested "dBASE", including the capitalisation. He also suggested that the first release of the product "II" would imply that it
4209-411: Was located on W. Pico Blvd , Los Angeles. Johnson's concept of retail store that sold software only, is the foundational retail concept of today's Apple & Google 's App Stores . By August 1984, SCI had grown to 113 stores, in 32 states. Glenn Johnson was Co-Founder, C.E.O., and Chairman Of The Board of Directors of Softwaire Centre International. Tate & Lashlee were co-investors. SCI
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#17327762855104278-409: Was no more able to run under Windows than was dBASE IV, causing Borland to abandon both code bases in 1993 and spin up a new team to create a new product, eventually delivered as dBASE for Windows in 1994. Meanwhile, Paradox was deliberately downplayed in the developer market since dBASE was now the largest Borland product. Microsoft introduced Access in late 1992, and eventually took over almost all of
4347-461: Was released to correct some of the numerous bugs found in the 1.0 release. As soon as the 1.1 release shipped, development focus turned to the next version, internally referred to as dBASE III version 2.0. Among other things, the 2.0 release would have a new kernel for increased speed, and new functions to improve application development. Esber's relationship with Wayne Ratliff, however, was tumultuous, and Ratliff quit several months later. Eventually
4416-650: Was taking in $ 40 million a year in sales (with approximately $ 15 million in Europe), the vast majority of it from dBASE or related utilities. Ashton Tate held a large company wide convention aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach , California, in early August, 1984 and presented the new products like Friday! to hundreds of clients, and staff. Immediately after the Queen Mary convention, George Tate suddenly died of
4485-415: Was that Wingz allowed simple in-cell editing, whereas contemporary versions of Excel forced you to use a separate data-entry bar, a feature also found on Lotus 1-2-3 for Macintosh. Another clear difference between Wingz and Excel was Wingz' powerful graphing system, once regarded as the most powerful available in any spreadsheet. Wingz' graphing system allowed the resulting graphs to be placed directly in
4554-484: Was that the program shipped with a number of bugs, which tainted the release. It also lacked a number of mathematical functions that Excel handled internally, and had no direct importer/exporter for Excel files. Microsoft responded to the release of Wingz, and others such as Ashton-Tate 's Full Impact and the Mac version of Lotus 1-2-3 that came out about the same time, by starting an extensive upgrade to Excel. They were soon showing it around claiming it would have all
4623-547: Was the first commercially successful personal computer software package.) During Esber's seven-year tenure, Ashton Tate had its most prosperous years and a few of its most controversial. It is also when Ashton-Tate became one of the "Big Three" personal computer software companies who had weathered the early 1980s " shakeout ", and was considered an equal of Microsoft and Lotus Development. Under his leadership Ashton-Tate sales grew over 600% from $ 40M to over $ 318M. In November, shortly after Esber took over, dBASE III version 1.1
4692-500: Was the world's sixth-largest microcomputer-software company. dBASE II reportedly had 70% of the microcomputer-database market, with more than 150,000 copies sold. Ashton-Tate published a catalog listing more than 700 applications written in the language, and more than 30 book, audio, video, and computer tutorials taught dBASE. Other companies produced hundreds of utilities that worked with the database, which Ratliff believed contributed to Ashton-Tate's success; "You might say it's because
4761-502: Was to hire an accountant to set up a financial system, install a management structure, and introduce processes to manage operations and orders. Cole's mission was "to shift the balance of power from those who understand how computers work to those who need what computers can do." Cole licensed two products in 1982, building on his publishing background. These two unsuccessful products were launched in October 1982: The Financial Planner and The Bottom Line Strategist . The Financial Planner
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