QuickFile 3.00 Description There are now many low cost data bases available for the Amiga. Why should anyone choose to use QuickFile over one of the others? This is an attempt to explain its features and give a brief comparison to other data base programs. Significant features are: Ease of Use I have tried to make QuickFile easy to use, although there has to be some trade-off between power and ease of use. Apart from text entry, all operations are done by pointing and clicking, using menus, buttons and selection from lists. Capacity. Many low cost data bases work fine on the typical sample file, but rapidly slow down, or run out of memory when you throw a larger file at them. QuickFile can cope with a respectable number of records on a 1 meg floppy based system. One user sent me a copy of his data base containing 6700 records. Even on my 1 meg floppy based system, you could find any record in under 1 second. Random Access with buffering Most cheap data bases are either random access (disk based) or sequential (memory based). QuickFile combines these. It is random access, but holds as much of the file as it can in memory. This makes access much faster, and reduces wear and tear on your disks and drives. It also allows files to be larger than available ram. You can control how much memory it uses. Multiple indexes. Your records are automatically kept in sequence. You can have any number of indexes if you want to see your records in different sequences. Each index can be based on any number of fields in ascending or descending sequence. You can prevent or allow duplicate index entries. Multiple Views QuickFile provides both Form and List displays. You can use the default view (format), or define and save any number of your own views for a file. For example you can have one view that shows all fields to enter, display and alter records, another to list only names and phone numbers, and yet another for a mailing label format. A view includes field positions and lengths, report details, window position and size. Field Formats The basic character, integer, number (float), calculation and date fields are supported. Any of these field types can be used in an index. You can add, delete, or change fields at any time. You can even change the type of an existing field, provided the actual content is compatible with the new format. Searching QuickFile has powerful search facilities. You can combine conditions to find, for example, all males with a postcode 4001 born between 1960 and 1965, with a name that sounds like Smith. Sorting Fast sorting over multiple fields in one pass. The sort can be restricted to a portion of large fields if memory is a problem. Printing Includes form and list reports, and multi-column labels. A page heading with page number, date and a user specified report title is optional. Pica, Elite and Condensed print can be used. Control breaks and totalling are supported. Import/Export Allows records to be moved between applications to easily load large numbers of records. Creates text files in a number of formats including mailmerge files for WordWorth, Final Copy, InterWord and Kindwords 3. Export can also create files for loading into spreadsheets or other databases. In writing QuickFile, I have attempted to provide enough functionality to make it usable for real work, while keeping resource requirements as low as possible. Ease of use has also been a primary objective. It certainly has its limitations; some of the more obvious being: It is not font sensitive. It will always use Topaz80 whatever you have specified as your default system font. Pictures, and sounds are not supported. Field presentation is fixed - for example you cannot display dates in different formats. File definition is in a separate program. This can be inconvenient but reduces the size of the main program. You cannot link different files together. It uses separate files for definition, data, indexes and views. This can get a bit confusing if you have a number of data bases in the same directory. Below is a summary of database programs I have looked at. Some of these are very good, but they all have their shortcomings HyperBase. Awkward interface and easy to crash. Pretty well unusable. DataEasy. Easy to use and it seems quite solid. Probably the best of the ones I looked at originally but rather slow. Sorting is extremely slow. Has a primitive unformatted list display. Reasonable capacity on 1 meg. Only character data type. bBaseII. Good looking and fast sorting but limited in capacity and no list style display or reports. Only character data type and only 9 fields. bBaseIII Good looking, easy to use and a good range of features. List style display is unformatted and provides page forward only. Has a range of reporting options. Only has character string fields and is still limited to 9 fields plus notes. Limited capacity and uses a fixed amount of memory whether you have 5 or 500 records. High memory requirements. Some functions will not work on a 1 meg system with only 512K chip ram. AmiBase 3.76 Very primitive database. Doesn't seem to work under WB2. AmiBase Pro II More advanced version of AmiBase 3.76. I haven't actually looked at it, as the disk I got was corrupted. It has a number of good features but seems to be a fairly crude implementation. It is memory resident so is probably better than Pro III. AmiBase Pro III. This is a licenceware program and is what inspired me to write QuickFile. Random access with no buffering, disk sorts (s..l..o..w), no field editing (you have to retype the whole field), one data base per disk. Reasonable searching (although slow), but poor printing. ProData 1.18 Powerful but with dated interface and fiddly to use. Far too much disk access to use with floppies. Does a ridiculous amount of i/o when filtering, and even when turning off filtering - it seems to set a flag in each record on disk. Interestingly it has no sort - you have to set up an index for each sequence you want. If you add an index, it rebuilds ALL indexes - slowly. Files are not limited by amount of ram. InfoFile A commercial program showing its age. Can do most things but is not intuitive to use. Poor memory management. You have to specify how much memory to use before you open the file and it allocates it in a single chunk. Unless you have just booted your system (or have lots of memory), memory will be fragmented and it may not find enough for a large file. File size is limited to available ram. It does have calculated fields and pictures. AmigaBase Powerful, but has only German docs and examples. I couldn't figure out how to code a search and crashed it several times trying. Seems difficult to use, as I had problems, and I have had lots of programming experience. It might help if you could read German. DataBench Quite powerful but has a limited list display and excessive memory requirements. File size is limited to what will fit in ram. I managed about 280 records on my 1 meg. It reduced free memory by 1K for each two 115 byte records I added. It also loses your changes if you don't press RETURN on a string gadget. Good range of field types, including calculation but you have to specify the formula in each record!!! List display is rudimentary and is limited to 15 characters per field. Can relate files, but this is disabled in freely distributed version. This version also has no documentation, but is reasonably easy to use. Flexer This is a good looking program with good features. Screen refresh is a bit slow and capacity may be a bit limited with 1 meg. File size is limited by ram. One major problem - I couldn't find any facility for printing. WBase Limited to 150 records, very basic editing. SuperBase Personal 2 By far the most powerful of those I have tried. Has indexes, cross file look-ups and validation, queries with control breaks and summaries etc. In fact just about everything you need. But the LIST display is downright poor - you only get one line at a time unless you choose CONTINUOUS. If you change direction it shows the same record twice (or more times). You can't select a record for detail display from the list. The screen redraws cause annoying flashing, and those 'For your info' requesters that keep popping up!!! Powerful query facility and cross file lookups, but not the easiest to use. DDBase I couldn't get it to work at all. It just keeps saying 'not enough memory' - and I have 3 meg. Pity - it looked interesting.