Cornerstone (software)
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| Developer(s) | Infocom |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1985 |
| Operating system | MS-DOS |
| Type | Relational database |
Cornerstone is a relational database for MS-DOS by Infocom. It was widely hailed upon its release in 1985 for its ease of use, but is generally considered one of the leading factors in the demise of the company.
In the 1980s, Infocom was widely known as a computer game developer and publisher. It developed the most popular works of interactive fiction available at the time and, in fact, can be considered a pioneer of the genre.
However, games were only considered a "jumping off" point for the company. Infocom was originally established as an outlet to develop "serious" products. Before forming the company, several of the founders had created the game Zork on mainframes while attending or working at MIT. When they joined to form Infocom, Zork was a natural choice as a first product because it was practically complete and didn't require much up-front funding. The enormous success of the game and its "sequels" (which were actually the other portions of the original mainframe game, which had been split into pieces that early personal computers could handle) led to the development of more interactive titles, due in large part to the highly portable technology the company developed for intelligent parsing. Despite the overwhelming success of its numerous game titles, the original founders of Infocom were still intent on developing serious titles. In addition, business software was seen as more lucrative than game titles since business traditionally paid thousands of dollars for each copy of software applications. After some deliberation, Infocom's board of directors decided to develop a relational database application for business users.
Database applications contemporary with Cornerstone were fairly inaccessible to non-programmers. The leading database application of the day, dBase II, required complex command-line commands even for the simplest operations. The Cornerstone developers were determined to make ease-of-use their chief priority. Dozens of people were hired in programming, marketing and other areas to swell Infocom's ranks to over 100 employees.
While development of Cornerstone was going well, it required an enormous amount of capital. Infocom borrowed heavily and used a sole source of venture capital. Profits from their interactive fiction titles were diverted to help fund Cornerstone, a move that disturbed many employees of the game division and led to an adversarial attitude towards the business division among some.
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