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Things move fast in IT. A lot of software – like hardware – eventually becomes ineffective and obsolete, often without even making as big an impact as first expected. It’s the same with programming languages. If they’re too complex to use, unsupported by the teams behind them, and left to become deprecated, they simply fall by the wayside.
So given that DataFlex’s roots go back nearly 50 years, it would seem that the team here at Data Access Worldwide must be doing *something* right to maintain a global user base of several million? Let’s take a look at how DataFlex came about, how it’s evolved, and where it’s going.
In 2025, version 25 of DataFlex dropped. Not bad for a fourth-generation high-level programming language first developed in the early 80s.
But the company behind it, Data Access Worldwide, was actually formed a few years prior: in June 1976 – around the same time as two guys named ‘Steve’ started a fruitfully successful computer company of their own out in California.
Data Access Worldwide, however, was founded on the opposite side of the US – in Miami, Florida – by the Casanave brothers, Chip and Cory: a formidable duo blending business savvy and tech competence. After a few moderately successful years as hardware vendors, the brothers Casanave saw the opportunity in creating IT-focused business solutions, and quickly transformed into a software company – with Cory building routines for Unix machines.
This gradually took shape as a comprehensive set of commands and statements, which the brothers named ‘DataFlex’; formally presenting it to the world at the COMDEX computer trade show in 1981.
Across the rest of the 1980s, DataFlex went from strength to strength. Developers loved it for its rapid application development capability. However, with the launch of version 2.3 in 1987, came its signature portability functionality. This was essentially the ability to run application code on almost any system architecture – including CP/M, MS-DOS, Unix, and others. Plus, it was hardware-agnostic and could be found in numerous industry applications; including inventory control and fraud detection systems.
This period saw the adoption of computers being more widely adopted and used to help businesses run more efficient operations. However, it was at a time when every computer manufacturer had its own operating system – which is why being able to use software across different devices was quite an anomaly in those days.
It was also around this time that Data Access Europe’s current managing director, Nick Nikijuluw, first encountered DataFlex – when looking to build multi-user database applications for local area networks. After reviewing 12 different software development tools, he selected what was then a mostly unknown quantity.
In Nick’s own words: “I had never heard of it. But I thought it was really, really powerful.”
“I had never heard of it. But I thought it was really, really powerful.”
Fast forward to the early 90s, and one of the biggest issues facing software companies was that developers needed to have a fairly advanced knowledge of coding; at a time when there was little programmer education available. This is why DataFlex continues to grow in popularity – it enables anyone with an interest in coding and in building solutions to do exactly that.
It was at this time that DataFlex shifted to object-oriented programming with around 10,000 companies working with it back then. Then in 1996, Visual Dataflex launched. This was a Microsoft Windows offer; one that was followed up in ’98 by DataFlex’s Web App Server platform – at a time when building HTML databases became popular but was still cumbersome (unless you were using DataFlex, that is…).
As DataFlex became more visible across Europe, and with Nick now at the helm in the Netherlands, the company evolved from a very small team distributing licenses through dealers, into a 60+-person business offering technical support, training, and consulting.
In 2000, the Dutch office took on responsibility for the whole of the EMEA region, which saw the team introduce channel partners, giving them the ability to grow their wider sales and marketing efforts. This play was very successful, allowing Data Access Europe to scale in the UK, Scandinavia, France, Germany, and beyond.
Growth continued over the next few years; just as UI and UX became much more important to digital businesses. As a result, designers and video producers joined the Data Access Europe team, along with technical application developers.
After a company rebrand in 2014, the following year saw the EMEA team take on a massive Unicode migration product; which prompted the US team to move most of the development work to Europe with the launch of DataFlex Studios. In 2017, The Learning Center launched – a video library designed to help new developers get to grips with the programming language in a practical and cost-effective way.
In January 2022, Data Access Europe took the lead and became home to the new company HQ. Right now, in 2024, Data Access Worldwide is divided into North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Europe – with a network of 13 international channel partners, thousands of customers, and millions of users – all of which continue to grow DataFlex’s global footprint; bolstering its already strong reputation among a variety of companies and organizations.
In the past, somebody without any programming experience couldn’t simply drag and drop different coding elements, and create a working data entry program. While continuous improvement remains crucial, feedback from customers is at the heart of DataFlex. And while there’s a solid roadmap for success being followed, both agility and opportunity continue to serve the business well – and will no doubt continue to do so for some time yet.
Note: this blog is written by a copywriter, who sat down with Nick to get the full story!