Wayne Ratliff
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Cecil Wayne Ratliff(born 1946) wrote thedatabaseprogramVulcan.Raised inGermanyand the US, he now resides in theLos Angelesarea.
Biography
[edit]Ratliff was born in 1946 inTrenton, Ohio,USA. From 1969 to 1982 he worked for theMartin Marietta Corporationin a progression of engineering and managerial positions. He was a member of theNASAViking programflight team when the Viking spacecraft landed onMarsin 1976, and wrote thedata managementsystem, MFILE, for the Viking lander supportsoftware.
In 1978 Ratliff wrote Vulcan, adatabase application,to help him make picks forfootball pools.Written inIntel 8080assembly language, it ran on theCP/Moperating systemand was modeled onJPLDIS.After selling Vulcan by himself from 1979 to 1980, he licensed the software, renameddBASE,toAshton-Tate.In 1982 Ratliff left JPL and joined Ashton-Tate as vice president of new technology. (He never used the software for its original purpose; in 1984 Ratliff confessed that dBASE had made him so busy that "I've only had time to watch two or three football games".)[1]
Ratliff was the project manager for dBASE III, as well as designer and leadprogrammer.[2]From 1987 to 1988 Ratliff wrote Emerald Bay, aclient/serverdatabase manager. Currently retired, Ratliff spends time sailing and studying mathematics. He has worked on computer systems for use in competitivesailboat racing.[3]
References
[edit]- ^Powell, David B. (1984-02-07)."From Basement To Boardroom".PC Magazine(interview). p. 131.Retrieved24 October2013.
- ^Susan Lammers."The History of Fox Pro: Interview with Wayne Ratliff".foxprohistory.org.Retrieved20 July2012.
- ^Doug Barney andThomas Caywood(1 August 2007)."Life After dBase".VisualStudio Magazine.Retrieved19 January2016.