ISAM database format originally created in dBase but used by many other systems like `Clipper` and `FoxPro` and still widely used for information interchange.
xBase (by software titles) or DBF (by main file extension) is unofficial name for a family of ISAM databases, that started with Ashton-Tate dBase-2 program.
Databases were consisted of tables, each of those consisted of main *.dbf files and a number of satellite files (indices, blobs, etc).
The format was dominant in its time frame and many programs also chosen it as their main format. However they usually extended it in different mutually incompatible ways. It also does not help that main file usually does not contain information which dialect is used and which auxiliary files were created.
This usually is not an issue for one-way import-export operations, but lead for bad consequences on shared read-rite operations (example: two programs that keep indices in different files may end up duplicating the data row and each program would only see their clone).
Main format branches were:
- Original: Ashton-Tate dBase -> Borland BDE (deprecated)
- Microsoft: FoxBase -> Visual FoxPro. It also was adopted by Clipper and Clip engines.
- Microsoft Works and Excel (and probably Access). As of Excel 2003 there was only basic support for most old format versions. None of extensions above were supported.
This format is more or less supported by a myriad of software titles, like Microsoft ODBC driver and SQL Server or like Apache OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice, however compatibility of supported DBF format feature sets between any two programs is rarely predictable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBASE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBase
