- Wayne Ratliff
Cecil Wayne Ratliff (born
1946 ,Trenton, Ohio ) wrote thedatabase program Vulcan. Raised inOhio andGermany , he now resides in theLos Angeles area.From 1969 to 1982, Ratliff worked for the
Martin Marietta Corporation in a progression of engineering and managerial positions. He was a member of theNASA Viking program flight team when the Viking spacecraft landed onMars in 1976, and wrote thedata management system, MFILE, for the Viking lander supportsoftware .In 1978 he wrote a database program in
assembly language at theJet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) inPasadena, California . He called it Vulcan (afterMr. Spock ofStar Trek ) and based it on Jeb Long'sJPLDIS . Ratliff says he wrote the program to help win the football pool at the office. He marketed it by himself from 1979 to 1980, but the headaches of handling all the orders proved too much, and he solicited no new sales.In late 1980 he met George Tate, who found the product worthwhile. He entered into a marketing agreement with
Ashton-Tate and renamed the Vulcan product dBASE. Ratliff had given up trying to sell copies of the software for $50 each. Tate thought the product would sell better at $695, so they made a deal and dBASE II was the result. The program was renamed dBASE II because of a belief that a product called "version one" wouldn't sell. The software originally ran on aCP/M computer and then was ported to theIBM PC. In mid-1983 Ashton-Tate purchased the dBASE IItechnology andcopyright from Ratliff, and he joined Ashton-Tate as vice president of new technology. Ratliff was the project manager for dBASE III, as well as designer and leadprogrammer .In 1988 Ratliff wrote Emerald Bay, a client/server database manager. Currently retired, Ratliff spends time sailing and studying mathematics. He has worked on computer systems for use in competitive
sailboat racing .References
*cite web|url=http://www.foxprohistory.org/interview_wayne_ratliff.htm|title=The History of FoxPro: Interview with Wayne Ratliff|first=Susan|last=Lammers|accessdate=2007-08-08
*cite web|url=http://reddevnews.com/qandas/article.aspx?editorialsid=113|title=Life After dBase: Database pioneer sets sail on a new course. An interview with C. Wayne Ratliff, Creator of dBASE II|first=Doug|last=Barney|coauthors=Thomas Caywood|publisher="Redmond Developer"|month=August | year=2007|accessdate=2007-08-08
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