Paradox 3

Steve Caple I first saw Paradox in 1985 when a guy named Rick Albers came to demo Ansa's new 1.1 release to the Sacramento PC Users Group. The feeling was like going from WordStar to WordPerfect 3.0, a sense of freedom and power.

A long time dBase user had an evaluation copy he let me use for a few weeks.  Going from dBase to Paradox was like finding yourself walking WITHOUT your shoe laces tied together.  I was hooked; within a week I wrote my first useful Paradox DOS program.  It took a few evenings to put together a script to  generate a Basic Bulk Mail sort,  using a series of Paradox queries against a bicycle club Century ride mailing list.  It then used PAL to send text to the printer, printing it out in 5 digit Zip, three digit Zip, and miscellaneous by state groups, including group header labels and spacers on one-across stock  -  just tear it apart at the headers and give it to the mailing volunteers, and a job that used to take 20 people 4 or 5 hours could be done by 5 or 6 in a single hour.  

Later, Paradox for Windows version 5 added many needed structural and indexing and linking features, and as hardware caught up with the needs of a GUI environment it became a powerful database for small companies and divisions or branches within large corporations.  Despite some years of no real changes it remains one of the best products for that purpose.