A software company founded in 1980 by Hal Lashlee and George Tate to market dBASE II, which was created by Wayne Ratliff. The company developed and acquired other products, including Framework, MultiMate and dBASE Mac. In the mid-1980s, Ashton-Tate was one of the hottest software companies in the personal computer business. In 1991, it was acquired by Borland, which dispensed with all products except dBASE.