If you want a program you can run on your desk to keep track of time billed to clients or that maintains a phone list of customers or your sales record, dbMAN can do the job. By contrast, FlagShip might be overkill for simple database operations such as mailing or customer tracking lists, in other words, the casual user, not programmer. This is not to say that you cannot use it for simple applications, but you may have to learn a bit of programming to really use FlagShip's wonderful and powerful features. FlagShip is more realistically aimed at people who want to develop or port software packages. It is hard to find two products that use the same index file formats.
FlagShip is a compiler.
The generated code can be linked with the gcc compiler. This means that you can link functions written in C or assembler into FlagShip programs. The compiled binaries may be distributed without paying royalties to MultiSoft. However, there is a public-domain program in their WorkGroup Solutions's FTP area named dbu. This program will provide the capability to create files and indexes, add, change, or locate records, and browse files.