This is not itself part of paradox, but a standalone library and is used in many other software products. Paradox is designed for use with the Borland Database Engine ( BDE). Paradox is a database development environment or a file-based database format created by Borland and Corel, which dBASE III, dBASE IV, dBASE 3 and is available on the market very similar and since the 1980s.