Ashton-Tate Corp.`s recent announcement that the already overdue dBase IV will be further delayed is bad news for both the third largest personal computer software vendor and its anxious customers.

dBASE II was the first version of dBASE, a 16-bit command-driven program for CP/M and subsequently DOS. In 1984, dBASE III upgraded the DOS version with more features and support for larger databases.

Ok, that report is due soon, so I'm going to fire up dBASE to run some reports, export the data into Lotus 1-2-3 and summarize everything with WordPerfect--while ...