craig@ozone.DEC (plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose) (12/18/85)
Randy White writes: > I am trying to locate a Public Domain database that can run under a > Z80 CP/M based system. My main concern is that it be able to sort on > any field without writing lengthly template/sort formulas. If you know anything about programming you might want to consider the public domain version of MUMPS. It's called MicroMUMPS and is available from: Dr. Richard Walters Dept. Elec. Comp. Engineering University of California Davis, CA 95616 I use it on my Kaypro II, and find it works well. I believe the cost is on the order of $60.00. MUMPS is a string-oriented ANSI-standard language which is designed to facilitate building and manipulating databases, and handles sorts very nicely from the programmers perspective. To sort on a field all you have to do is use the SET command to create an array (either in memory or on disk) using the desired field as a subscript, and MUMPS sorts it for you automatically. For example, let's say I have a MUMPS array: ^PEOPLE(NUMBER)=NAME;STREET;CITY;STATE;ZIP where NUMBER is an internal counter, and the data nodes (NAME, etc.) are my fields. To sort on ZIP would involve looping through ^PEOPLE(NUMBER), setting a variable ZIP to the 5th Piece of the node, and SETing the following scratch array : ^TEMP(ZIP,NUMBER)="" Then all I would need to do is loop through ^TEMP(ZIP,NUMBER), and retrieve my data nodes from ^PEOPLE(NUMBER), and do whatever I wanted with the records (write them out to a file, generate form letters, whatever...). If you have a hard disk on your Z80 system, there is a public domain database management system called Fileman (developed and used heavily at the Veterans Administration) which is also available from Dr. Walters which can do all this for you, without your needing to know anything about MUMPS code. Robert Craig Medical Systems Group (Home of Digital Standard Mumps) ..decwrl!ozone!craig