dooley@utkux1.utk.edu (Kevin Dooley) (12/01/90)
Hi! I am looking for a good easy to use data base program for keeping track of all kinds-o-stuff. For example, I want to make a recipe data base and a seperate household budget data base, and an address book, and so forth. I would like to be able to search through the data on a variety of different keywords and have complete control over the format in which the data is stored (for example, the way one naturally stores recipes is very different from how one stores the addresses of one's close friends ... providing one is not interested in canibalism). It would be absolutely ideal if I could tack word processed files into the data base records using the AREXX port on my favourite word processor, but this is perhaps ambitious. So my question is: does such a program exist, and how and where can I get one if it does? Kevin Dooley
mwm@raven.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) (12/01/90)
In article <1990Nov30.210902.21963@cs.utk.edu> dooley@utkux1.utk.edu (Kevin Dooley) writes:
Hi!
Hi,
I am looking for a good easy to use data base program for keeping track
of all kinds-o-stuff. For example, I want to make a recipe data base
and a seperate household budget data base, and an address book, and so
forth.
I've been using MFF+ for just those kinds of things for a couple of
years now. It's not up to professional standards, but it's just fine
for home use. I even keep a complete list of the Fish disks in it, as
well as the kinds of things you're doing.
If you're not familiar with it, MFF+ is unique. The acronym is for
"Micro Fiche Filer". It uses an interface similar to a fiche reader:
One small window with a rectangle drawn on it (and up/down scroll
bar), showing records as selected/deselected. Moving the rectangle in
the small window changes what you see in the large window, in an
intuitive fashion. You can examine records from the large window in
detail by opening them.
I would like to be able to search through the data on a variety
of different keywords
It's in there. You can search any arbitrary feild for text; text that
satisfies some condition; numeric expressions that satisfy some
condition; etc, and logical combinations of these conditions. My
address book has a "notes" field that would more correctly be called
"keywords"; it's trivial to select all records with a specific
keyword.
and have complete control over the format in which the data is stored
Well, you have complete control over what goes into each record. How
MFF+ organizes the records in a file it controls. What's nice about
this is that you can layout a large selection of different forms. Each
form contains whatever elements you wish it to, arranged into a
rectangle pretty much however you like. You get to choose different
forms for different purposes - one for display in the fiche magnifier,
one for display as an "opened" record, one for printing, one for
sorting, and so on. My address book is arranged so that the magnifier
shows first & last name; the printer version prints that plus home &
work numbers (which gets saved to a file and grep'ed on Unix boxes);
and the Opened version has everything.
It would be absolutely ideal if I could tack word processed files into
the data base records using the AREXX port on my favourite word
processor, but this is perhaps ambitious.
That's already MFF+. I use an ARexx script to split the "contents"
files on Fish disks up and load them into the data base. I wrote (for
grins) an Arexx script to do "address templates", but that's overkill
- MFF+'s form editor can handle that quite nicely.
So my question is: does such a program exist, and how and where can I
get one if it does?
It's a commercial product. Should be available at finer Amiga software
houses everywhere.
BTW, it runs just fine on an A3000 under 2.0.
Now, for the catches:
1) The bigg one - it's just been orphaned. The author has given up on
the Amiga market, and is doing IBM PC work. They're trying to find
someone to take it over (as a bundle - source and all). I hope they
succeed.
2) It's requesters don't use the "amiga standard" way of doing things.
Most notably, it uses escape to clear a requester instead of Amiga-X,
and Amiga-X is used to finish the requester.
3) It keeps things in memory, and doesn't page them to disk. This is
what keeps it from being up to proffessional standards. I've never had
any problems with it running out of memory, though - even with the
Fish catalog through #410.
In spite of the latter two, I've been quite happy with it. I'd
purchase it again, even now...
<mike
--GB03@Lehigh (12/03/90)
Try micro fische or micro fisch plus. I have found them very useful. I also like the paradigm of a microfisch file card.