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Comment by MrTonyD | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it was Reflex...I think I was still on CPM. It seems like an early precursor to that program though. Honestly, my memory is pretty fuzzy - it wasn't much of a database program, it mostly just reorganized the tables in some simple ways (I remember wondering if the program's authors really understood relational. They seemed to be mostly just creating tables and doing a few operations. Jumping on the relational buzzword.) It was impressive to see it build boxes though - in those days, that was an accomplishment.

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Yes, agree. Do you recall orange colored interface? That's the only thing I recall, beyond creating tables/boxes and filling in the data.

I remember an interface that was changing quickly. The first release was pretty useless - great demo but almost no useful purpose. Each release was dramatically different - lots more colors and more additions of their custom basic to try to add "relational"-type capabilities (I was trying to make it work as a small database - but it really just presented tables and did some simple reorg.) I enjoyed showing it to people in the office - they were always impressed by the "GUI". About that same time another database builder product came out - it was exclusively basic but with a custom editor that I remember impressed me. So switched to that. I do remember going back to the original program later and finding that they had pretty much abandoned their "table entry" gui. It really didn't scale to anything useful in the context of a database - and trying to define operations from that perspective just made everything "hidden" behind their table gui. (I also worked part time in a computer shop. I was a complete geek. So I always got the latest CP/M and Apple software and hardware.) Edit: I do remember a lot of orange at one point.

Just checking: was the orange interface a monochrome, amber, screen?

It's surprisingly hard to search for this kind of stuff.

I had a go, but not successfully.

I did find this list of software, which might trigger a memory?

Cardfile,

pfs:file,

QuickFile,

PC File[1],

4th Dimension,

Paradox,

dBase,

Filemaker,

foxpro,

Nutshell,

Vulcan,

http://www.retrocomputing.net/info/allan/eBook13.pdf

http://jeanne-sewell.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/history-of-datab...

None of those names sound right to me. Back in those days someone could write some software, put it on a floppy, xerox some instructions and put it all into a big plastic sandwich bag. Our computer store would then put it on a shelf to sell. That was how it was done back then. I remember calling a couple of companies and talking directly to the developer. Most of the products you mention came much later. It wouldn't surprise me if there isn't any information about those early products - except among a few old timers on blogs like this one. And some products were strictly regional - depending on which computer stores were visited by the developer. But I appreciate your effort to help the OP.

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