Information About ™Infodata |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT INFODATA | |
| defunct software companies | |
| defunct computer companies of the united states | |
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Infodata Corporation was a Software Development and Database manufacturer based in Falls Church, Virginia . Infodata developed a database system from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. The Infodata database program, Inquire , was well regarded and widely used in the 1970s and 1980s. Inquire was one of the first "text" databases and used for publication storage, litigation support, and other text intense problems. Infodata's Inquire was a fully functional DBMS . It included an easy to use but non- SQL , query language. The basic architecture was "inverted list", not Relational . A full decade before Oracle , Access , Alpha Five , DBASE , DB2 , and other DBMS programs were available, Infodata had a working database solution. Infodata sold many hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Inquire and invested in new capabilities and features. Unfortunately, Infodata misjudged the scope of the market and declined to offer a low cost, desktop or server based version of their database program. As other vendors entered the market, Infodata's market share eroded. In a sense, Infodata is a case study of a company that had the market to themselves, then did everything wrong. They did not lower their product costs. They chose to avoid new markets. Year by year they reduced their support and offerings until customers had no choice but to go elsewhere. In 2004, after several years of losing money, Infodata sold its remaining assets and closed the company. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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