In order to enable the bundled dbase library and to use these functions, you must compile PHP with the --enable-dbase option.
We recommend that you do not use dBase files as your production database. Choose any real SQL server instead; MySQL or Postgres are common choices with PHP. dBase support is here to allow you to import and export data to and from your web database, since the file format is commonly understood with Windows spreadsheets and organizers. Import and export of data is about all that dBase support is good for.