[sehugg]

Wikipedia has a couple of ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_%28software%29#Rec...

But in 1985, dBase and its clones were ascendant, and they were plentiful and programmable and somewhat language-compatible. Lots of people were employed hacking on dBase code for small businesses. (I also wonder if piracy made dBase more ubiquitous...)