database. Forms and reports were stored in files external to the database file. By default, the application would start with a menu asking which database file you wanted to open. Using a startup switch, R:Base could be run entirely from a command prompt, called the "R-prompt," in system documentation. The application command prompt was an although this could be modified to other characters by editing a configuration file. In an example database named Sales, to query the database, you would first open it by typing at the R-prompt. Using SQL-style queries, one could pull on-screen displays of data from tables. would display one screen of data from the fields FNAME LNAME CITY ZIPCODE from the table named MAIN. Pressing the space bar would scroll to the next 24 records. A built-in help system produced text after the prompt if your query was invalid or the syntax was not understood by the database engine. A feature of the program was its ability to create applications that ran scripts generated by an internal scripting system. Scripts were stored in files with an extension .APP. The system would first ask for type of menu desired, (one option was pull-down, for example,) then asked you to fill out the pull down headings. Next, you were stepped through a list of actions for each menu choice. At the end, the procedures that had been stepped through were recorded in the database file and could be called from an automatically generated menu system. To prevent a user from tampering with the generated script, an encoded version was created. The user could password protect the encoded version for configuration management. A utility called File Gateway allowed import and export of common file formats of the era such as Data Interchange Format (DIF), SYLK, Lotus 1-2-3, and dBASE files. Another utility, called Recover, was intended to recover damaged R:Base databases. R:BASE 5000, R:BASE 2.0 R:Base 4000 was followed by R:Base 5000, which substantially improved features and gained wider acceptance. R:BASE 2.0 rolled out a new file format and introduced the ability to use memory above 640K. There was support for the Intel 80286 processor. The system had substantially better documentation. This version continued the evolution toward full ANSI SQL compliance. Forms, scripts, and reports were rolled into the database files. Three files with extensions .RB1, .RB2, and .RB3 contained everything for a single database. R:BASE 3.x R:Base 3.0