Paradox is a relational database management system currently published by Corel Corporation.
It was originally released for MS-DOS by Ansa Software, and then updated by Borland after it bought the company. In mid 1991 Borland began the process to acquire Ashton-Tate and its competing
dBase product line; A Windows version was planned for release by Borland in 1992, but was delayed until January 1993, by which time Microsoft's Access for Windows was available. It was last updated in 2009.
Editions
DOS
Paradox for DOS was a relational database management system originally written by Richard Schwartz and Robert Shostak, and released by their Belmont, California-based Notable classic versions were 3.5 and 4.5. Versions up to 3.5 were evolutions from 1.0. Version 4.0 and 4.5 were retooled in the Borland C++ windowing toolkit and used a different extended memory access scheme.
Paradox/DOS was a successful DOS-based database of the late 1980s and early 1990s. At that time, dBase and its xBase clones (Foxpro, Clipper) dominated the market. Other notable competitors were Clarion, DataEase, R:Base, and DataFlex.
The features that distinguished Paradox/DOS were:
- An enhanced design and implementation of visual Query by Example that was supported by an AI engine for heuristic, dynamic query optimization.
- Effective use of conventional, extended, and expanded memory – caching data tables and particularly indexes, which caused Paradox to execute tasks very quickly in contrast to the explicit skills required for xBase performance optimisation.
- An innovative programming language, the Paradox Application Language (PAL), that was readable, powerful, and could be recorded from keyboard actions (rather like Lotus 1-2-3 macro recording).
- Lotus-like text menus and windows, which was the native interface (in contrast to dBase, which had a command-line interface with menus layered on top).
- Particularly in Paradox 1.0 and 2.0, the user and programming manuals won readability awards Still, Paradox/W sold well for a while. Meanwhile, Borland was going through some serious problems caused by the Ashton-Tate acquisition. Many product lines were discontinued, corporate reorganization and consolidation was painful, and, even worse, the internal dBASE project at the center of the acquisition rationale was eventually canceled for technical reasons, leaving Borland with a collapse in revenues and a serious need to develop the missing dBASE for Windows in a hurry. Borland lost the strength to fight the multiple marketing battles it needed for its range of products. Paradox was minimally marketed to the developers since the company decided it would hold out for a replacement of dBASE, which eventually came out in 1994, too late for the company.
To make matters worse, while the dBASE for DOS clone (FoxBase) copied dBASE closely, the Windows version of this product was developed without an existing dBASE for Windows model. One of dBASE for DOS's strengths was multi-vendor support, and this was lost in the various Windows xBase products. Borland's Visual dBASE for Windows couldn't run Microsoft's Foxbase for Windows programs and vice versa. Faced with a fragmented market and the need to rewrite programs to take advantage of Windows, there was little incentive for xBase users to stay loyal to the brand they'd used for DOS.
In 1995, Microsoft bundled Access into their Microsoft Office Professional Suite with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This effectively killed the end-user desktop database market for standalone products.
Despite solid follow-on versions with improvements to usability for entry-level users, Paradox faded from the market. It was included in the sale of Borland products to WordPerfect, which were in turn resold as WordPerfect got into financial products, and, at the time of writing, Paradox for Windows, WordPerfect, and Quattro Pro for Windows are all owned by Corel and sold as part of their office suite. dBASE for Windows came out too late to be a significant player in the Windows market: most dBASE programmers by then had migrated to Microsoft FoxBASE, a very similar database tool. Borland itself retained the InterBase/IDAPI server and focused efforts on its Delphi tools, which over the years gave it an influential but small part of the data-oriented developer market.
Corel Paradox
Corel acquired certain rights to develop and market Paradox in the mid-1990s and released Corel Paradox 8 in 1997.
Paradox was also bundled in the professional version of Corel's WordPerfect Office suite. Subsequent releases included Office Professional Edition versions 9, 10, 11, 12, X3, X4, X5, X6, X7, X8, X9, and 2020. However, it has not been updated since 2009 with the Paradox Hot Fix 1 for X4. All later releases carry same version of 11.0.0.676.
Reception
Evaluating a prerelease beta of Paradox 3, BYTE in 1989 said that it "has the potential of overtaking dBASE IV" without being a dBASE clone. The magazine said that it "has all the capabilities necessary for even the most advanced applications" yet was, unlike competitors, easy to use.
Computer Intelligence estimated in 1987 that Ansa had 3% of the Fortune 1000 PC database market, tied for third behind Ashton-Tate and Microrim. A 1990 American Institute of Certified Public Accountants member survey found that 5% of respondents used Paradox as their database.