R:BASE (or RBASE) is a relational database program for the PC created by Wayne Erickson in 1981. Erickson and his brother, Ron Erickson, the original R:Base database was written on a Heathkit CP/M computer that Erickson built at home. On November 13, 1981, Erickson and his brother, Ron Erickson, incorporated the company, MicroRim, Inc. to sell the database, MicroRIM. "RIM" was an acronym for Relational Information Management, a mainframe database developed by NASA's IPAD project team, which included Erikson at Boeing Computer Services. The team and NASA colleagues received a NASA award for the project, which was used by NASA to track Space Shuttle heat shield tiles.
The earliest version released by MicroRim was called R:Base 4000 and was released in 1983. It worked with early versions of Microsoft MS-DOS or IBM PC DOS (version 2 or above). It shipped with a binder-type manual and the program on 360KB floppy disks. As the system was DOS-based, the interface was entirely text-based with the exception of DOS line-draw characters.
Privately funded and ultimately venture backed, the MicroRim database products achieved significant market share in the mid-1980s in what some called the "database wars" between R:Base and the market share leader, Ashton-Tate's dBASE. One MicroRim ad stated "R-way versus D-hardway," a jab at the less relational dBASE architecture. MicroRim adhered to the rules of the father of relational database technology, Edgar F. Codd and prided itself on the elegance of its code.
In the mid-1980s, when Microsoft did not have their own database, it obtained a license to resell R:BASE in Europe to have a full suite of software products. By 1989 Microrim's product was the second best-selling database software in the world. Computer Intelligence estimated in 1987 that Microrim had 9% of the Fortune 1000 PC database market, second to Ashton-Tate's 67%. A 1990 American Institute of Certified Public Accountants member survey found that 10% of respondents used R:Base as their database, in third place behind Lotus 1-2-3 (25%) and dBASE (16%).
1990s
In June 1998, R:BASE Technologies, Inc. (a privately held company in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, USA) acquired the R:BASE products from Abacus Software Group.
Recent years
Some of the features included, and continue to include, a programming-free application development wizard, automatic multi-user capabilities, a full-featured 4GL programming language, form, report and label designers, and a fully ANSI SQL compliant relational language capability.