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Instructions for the database program Copyright (c) 1988 by Eric B. Lindros. CONTENTS: System requirements............................2 Description of program.........................2 Controlling the program........................2 Mouse.....................................2 Menu......................................2 Keyboard..................................3 Window....................................3 File name line.......................3 Headings line........................3 Work area............................3 Arrow buttons........................3 Scroll bars..........................3 Marked record indicator..............4 Dialog boxes..............................4 The file selection dialog............4 The field selection dialog...........5 The subfield dialog..................5 Operations.....................................5 Loading an existing database from disk....5 Creating a new database...................5 Saving your changes.......................5 Closing a database........................6 Quitting the program......................6 Working with records......................6 Typing in changes....................6 Inserting new records................7 Deleting records.....................7 Duplicating records..................7 Clearing records.....................7 Marking records......................7 Working with fields.......................7 Creating new fields..................7 Removing fields......................7 Changing display width of fields.....7 Changing display order of fields.....7 Utilities.................................8 Sorting records......................8 Searching for records................8 Importing data.......................9 Exporting data.......................9 Encrypting records...................9 Deleting groups of records...........9 Unmarking all records................9 Reporting.................................9 Columnar.............................9 Standard.............................9 Text merge..........................10 Page 1 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS This program will run on any Atari ST computer. The program will run in both the medium and high resolution modes. In addition, this program may be run from hard disk, ram disk, etc., and from within folders. DESCRIPTION OF THIS PROGRAM This program is designed to manipulate information which can be organized into a variable number of records; each record with a set of common fields. An example of this is a mailing list. With a mailing list, there is one record for each addressee being maintained on the list. Some of the fields of a mailing list would be last name, first name, street, city, state, and zip code. Not all information can be readily arranged into records with common fields as could be done in the example of the mailing list above. For example, if you wanted to have a mailing list which would have a separate field for the first name of each individual at a given household, you would not be able to maintain such a list with this program. That type of application would require the use of a more sophistacated program called a relational database management program. Relational databases offer great flexibility in the organization of information. However, they are often difficult to learn to use. In addition, they are usually quite costly. CONTROLLING THE PROGRAM This program uses many of the features of the Atari ST desktop. For this reason, control of this program should already be familiar to you. If this is the case, you may wish to skip the instructions and dive right in by running DATABASE.TOS and opening the file SAMPLE.DAT. THE MOUSE. The mouse has four uses in this program. The first is the selection of menu items. The second is the selection of options in dialogs. The third is the positioning of the editing cursor within the display area of the window. The fourth is the control of the window display controllers. Most of the time, the mouse will be represented on the screen by an arrow. This indicates that the program is ready to receive your input. However, when the program is busy, the mouse will be represented on the screen by a bee. THE MENU BAR. The menu bar is displayed as a set of headings at the top of the screen. For this program, the headings are File, Edit, Fields, Utilities, and Reports. Moving the mouse onto one of these headings will cause a box to drop down from it. This box will contain the choices for that heading. You may select one of these choices by moving the mouse over it and clicking with the left mouse button. If you decide not to take any of the choices, you may move the mouse onto another heading or exit the menu by clicking the left mouse button while no choices are highlighed. Not all of the menu items will always be available. When this is the case, the item will be displayed in the "shadow" mode. In this program, all items are available except when there is no file open. Page 2 THE KEYBOARD. Whenever text input is required, the keyboard must be used. The position where the text will appear is indicated by a small black rectangle called the text cursor. When a key is pressed, a character is inserted at the location of the cursor, and the cursor moves one position to the right. If the delete key is pressed, the character under the cursor will be removed, and the remainder of the text line will be shifted one position to the left. If the backspace key is pressed, the character to the left of the cursor will be deleted and the cursor will be moved one position to the left. The position of the cursor may also be changed by pressing the arrow keys. THE WINDOW. A window is a graphic device used for "looking" into part of a work area. In the case of this program, the work area is all of the information in the open database file. Often the entire file cannot be displayed at once. Through the use of the window controls, you may control which part of the work area is to be displayed. In this program, the window will be showing only while a file is open. The window of this program has six components. These are the file name line, the headings line, the display area, the arrow buttons, and the marked record indicator. At the top of the window is the file name indicator. This will display the complete path of the file which is currently open. Directly under the file name line is the headings line. This line will display the field names which are currently being displayed. If only part of a field is being displayed, or if a field has a display width which is narrower than the field name, part of the field name may not be visible. The largest part of the window is the display area. However, the display area is usually just a small part of the work area. Each row of the display area represents one record. One way to change which part of the work area is being displayed is to press the arrow keys until the text cursor moves out of the display area. In addition, the display area may be moved by using the mouse and the scroll bars or arrow buttons. There are two scroll bars on the window. One is called the vertical slider and the other is called the horizontal slider. These are represented by a white rectangle on top of a polka-dot rectangle. The size of the white rectangle indicates what proportion the display area is to the work area. Also, the position of the white rectangles indicate what part of the work area is being displayed. Clicking with the left mouse button on a polka-dot region cause the display to move by one page in that direction. In addition, the white box may be "dragged." This is accomplished by moving the mouse over the white box, pressing the left button and, while keeping the left button down, moving the mouse until a shadowed outline of the box appears where you would like the display area to be. Another means of moving the display area is by clicking the mouse on one of the four arrow buttons. These are represented on the screen by boxes with arrows in them. The arrow buttons are located at the bottom left, bottom right, and top right of the window. Page 3 The final part component of the window of this program is the marked record indicator. This is located immediately to the left of the display area. Records may be marked for special treatment by moving the mouse into the marked record indicator area and pressing the left mouse button. When a record is marked, a small black rectangle will be showing in the indicator. To unmark a record, simply click with the right mouse button in the indicator area next to that record. DIALOG BOXES. Often the program will need more information than can be provided through use of the menu. When this is the case, the menu item will be followed by an elipsis, indicating that further dialog will be required. When such a menu item is selected, a dialog box will appear on the screen. Within a dialog box, there may be three main types of objects. These are prompts, editable text, and buttons. Prompts will usually give an extremely terse explanation of how the information is to be used. Editable strings take keyboard input. An editable string is indicated by a text cursor. Buttons are usually indicated by text surrounded by a box. However, sometimes a button will just be text. Also, a button may have a heavy box around it. This indicates that that object will be selected if the return key is pressed. Selecting objects is usually accomplished by moving the mouse of the desired object and clicking with the left mouse button. At least one object in each dialog will cause the dialog to terminate when that object is selected. These exit objects will usually be buttons and will most often be labelled "OK" and "Cancel." In this program, there are three dialog boxes that deserve special attention. These are the file selector, the field selector, and the subfield dialogs. The file selection dialog is used to find and select existing files. There are two key components of the file selection dialog box. The first of these is the search path. Initially, the search path will be the equivalent of the folder you were in when this program was executed. In addition, the path will end with "\*.*" The asterisks are wild cards. The first asterisk tells the program to look for any file name. The second asterisk tells the program to look for any file extension. Another type of wild card is the question mark. A question mark tells the system that any letter in the question mark's position is all right for a match. You may modify the search path to look for only certain files. For instance, if you only wanted to select from the files whose extensions began with the letter 'D', you would end the search path with "\*.D??" If the path you want is on another disk drive, you may quickly changes drives by clicking on the appropriately lettered button located along the right side of the dialog box. The other key area of the file selection dialog is the file display box. This box will contain a list of the files which matched the search path. Clicking with the left mouse button on a file in the file display box will cause that file to be selected. If the file name is preceded by a black diamond, then the name is actually a folder name. Selecting a folder will cause that folder to be opened and the files within it to be displayed. If there are more files than will fit in the file display box, you may display these by clicking with the left mouse button on either the up arrow or down arrow. Page 4 Similar in appearance to the file selection dialog box is the field selection dialog box. Like the file selector, the field selector will present you with a box containing all of the available choices. If the are more fields than may be displayed in the box, you may click with the left mouse button on either the up arrow or down arrow to change which field names are displayed. Clicking with the left mouse button on a field name will cause that field to be selected. Sometimes when working with fields, it is desirable to work with just certain portions of the field. Take as an example a mailing list which has "City, State Zip" combined all into one field. If you wanted to work with just the State or zip (assuming that they always have the same number of characters), the subfield dialog box would allow you to do this. There are two parameters to a subfield. The first of these is the maximum width of the subfield. The second is the offset of the begining of the subfield, which may be measured from either the left or the right side of the data elements in the field. If a data element is narrower (starting from the offset) than the width, the remainder of the subfield will be blank. Using the field described in the above example, if you wanted to sort by State, you would select a width of 2 and an offset from the right of 8. OPERATIONS WORKING WITH FILES. The functions which operate on entire files are selected from the File menu. These are the operations of opening, creating, saving, renaming, and closing files. In addition, the operation of exiting the program is located under this heading. LOADING A DATABASE FILE. To load and open an existing database file from a disk drive, select the Open... option from the File menu. If there is already a file open, it will be closed automatically. Next, you will be presented with the file selection dialog box. See above for directions on using the file selector. When you have selected a file, the program will make sure that it is a database file. If it is not, you will be told that the file is of the wrong type, and the window will be closed. If this happens, you may repeat the process, but with a different file. CREATING A NEW DATABASE FILE. To begin a new file, select Create... from the File menu. If a file is currently open, it will be closed. Next, a single blank record will be created and you will be asked for a name and display width for a field. You may make as many fields as you like, but there must be at least one. Don't worry about getting the field names and widths just right. They can easily be changed latter on. SAVING A DATABASE FILE. Until saved, all changes made to a database file are only temporary. This is because the entire file is held in the computers volatile RAM while it is being worked on. If you press reset or have a power outage while working on a file, the work you have done since the last save will be lost. For this reason, it is a good idea to periodically use the Save option from the File menu. In addition, you may use the Save as.. option to change the open file's name and save it under the new name. This will leave the original disk file unchanged. The Save as.. option is useful for creating a database file which is a subset of another file. Page 5 CLOSING A DATABASE FILE. When you are finished working on a database file and wish to go on to something else, it is necessary to close the currently open file. This may be done by selecting Close from the File menu. First, the program will check to see if you have made any changes to the database since it was last saved. If any changes have been made, you will be asked if it is ok to abort the changes. If your answer is no, then the Close option will terminate and you will then be able to select the Save option. Otherwise, the entire file will be cleared from RAM and the window will be closed. It is not necessary to explicitly execute the Close option. This is because Close is automatically called by Open..., Create..., and Quit. QUITTING THE PROGRAM. When you are finished using the program, select the Quit option from the File menu. This will return you to the GEMDOS desktop. It is recommended that you leave the program in this way (as opposed to pressing reset or turning the power off) because the program will first check to see if any changes have been made to a database file since its last save. WORKING WITH RECORDS. Probably the most import aspect of a database management program is its ability to make changes to the records in a database file. This program provides a variety of functions to accomplish that task. Updating existing information and entering new records may be accomplished by use of the keyboard. In addition, the menu option under the Edit heading allow insertion, deletion, duplication, and clearing of entire records. All textual information is normally entered using the keyboard. Characters are inserted at the location of the text cursor and characters from the position of the cursor to the end of the data element are shifted to the right. Characters which are shifted past the display width boundary of a field become hidden but are not lost. When the cursor moves past the display width boundary of a field, data entry becomes effective in the next field to the right. If there are no more fields to the right, data entry becomes effective at the first field of the next record. In addition to the keys which produce printable characters, the follow keys have the listed effects: <Return> Clear field under and to right of cursor, and move to the next field to the right. <Delete> Remove character under cursor and move characters that are to the right of the cursor one position to the left. <Backspace> Move the cursor one position to the left and then delete the character under the new cursor position. <Left arrow> Move the cursor one position to the left. <Shift><Left arrow> Move the cursor to the begining of the current field. If the cursor is already at the begining of a field, it will be moved the the begining of the previous field. <Right arrow> Move the cursor one position to the right. <Shift><Right arrow> Move the cursor to the begining of the next field. <Up arrow> Move the cursor up one record. <Down arrow> Move the cursor down one record. Moving past the last record will cause a new blank record to be placed at the end of the file. In addition, the cursor may be position by clicking with the mouse in the desired location. Page 6 INSERTING NEW RECORDS. Selecting the Insert option from the Edit menu will cause a new blank record to be place immediately before the record under the text cursor. DELETING RECORDS. Selecting the Delete option from the Edit menu will cause the record under the cursor to be removed from the file. This option will not work if there is only one record in the file. CLEARING RECORDS. Selecting the Clear option from the Edit menu will cause the record under the cursor to become blank. DUPLICATING RECORDS. Selecting the Duplicate option from the Edit menu will cause a new record to be inserted immediately before the record under the text cursor. This new record will then have the contents of the next record copied to it. MARKING RECORDS. It is often desirable to work with just a few of the records within a database. For example, you might want to print labels from a mailing list, but only for the people you plan on inviting to your next wild bash. This program provides just such a capability. To mark a record for special treatment, click with the left mouse button next to the record in the far left side of the screen. A black rectangle will indicate that the record is marked. To unmark a record, click in the same location with the right mouse button. WORKING WITH FIELDS. Functions which effect fields are selected from the Fields menu. These operations include creating new fields, removing fields, changing the name and display width of a field, and changing the display order of the fields. CREATING NEW FIELDS. Selection of the More... option from the Fields menu will allow you to create new fields. You will be presented with a dialog box which will request the name and display width of the new field. Any printable characters, including nothing at all, is valid for a field name. The display width may be between 1 and 255. This value only effects the way data is displayed within the display window. Text which exceeds the display width is valid but will not be displayed. After you have entered the field name and display width and pressed the OK button, the program will make space in the file for the additional field. This can sometimes take a few seconds, depending mostly on the size of the file. REMOVING FIELDS. Selection of the Delete... option from the Fields menu will allow you to delete an existing field. The field selector dialog box will be presented to you. If you change your mind and decide not to delete a selected field, don't worry because you will next be asked if you really want to delete the field. If you answer yes to this prompt, the field will be removed and all data in that field for each record will be lost. CHANGING FIELD DISPLAY WIDTH. Selection of the Modify... option from the Fields menu will allow you to change both the field name and display width of a selected field. Or, you may invoke this function by clicking with the mouse on the field name in the headings line of the menu. CHANGING FIELD DISPLAY ORDER. Fields will initially be displayed in the order of their creation. However, the display order of two fields may be swapped by selecting the Rearrange... option from the Fields menu. You will be presented with the field selector dialog box twice. The two fields you select will be interchanged in their display order. Page 7 UTILITIES. This is a general category of functions which don't fit very well into any of the other categories. Functions grouped under the Utilities menu heading include sorting, searching, importing and exporting data, encrypting, deleting groups of records, and unmarking all records. SORTING RECORDS. When lists are put in a particular order, finding certain information becomes very easy. For example, If you want to call Gern Blanstein on the phone, you might begin by opening your directory to the B's. But could you imagine the trouble you would have if the names were simply in the order that they were entered into the phone company's database? You would have to look at every name until you happened upon Gern Blanstein. No, that wouldn't do at all. So, you get your phone listing from the phone company pre-sorted by last name and first name. But, what if your six year old child takes a phone message for you and totally botches the name. In addition, the phone number only has six digits! Rather than calling the several hundred possible numbers that may have been the original number, wouldn't it be nice to have a phone listing that was sorted by phone number? Then you would only have to check the numbers against the ones of people that you know. The directory is an excellent example of a database file (albeit a very large one.) Just as sorting makes good sense for a directory, it makes good sense for just about every database file. This program will allow you to sort your database files by any field you choose. However, you may only sort by one field at a time. If you want to sort a list by first and last names, for example, you would need to first sort by the first name and then by the last name. The rule to follow here is to sort by fields in the reverse order of their importance to a particular ordering. An important thing to consider when sorting is that all sorting will be done based on the ASCII value of the characters in the text of the fields being sorted. If the text is always alphabetic, the sort will have the results you might expect. On the other hand, if the sorted fields contain numbers of a ununiform width, they will not normally be sorted by their numerical value. Here is an example: 7634.52 0.0023 the lowest ASCII value 93.45 ----> sorts to ----> 26497.3 26497.3 734.52 0.0023 93.45 the highest ASCII value Yuck!! The answer is to align the numbers by their decimal point. Specifically: 7634.52 0.0023 93.45 ----> sorts to ----> 93.45 26497.3 26497.3 0.0023 7634.52 This is a little more like it. But even with this stunt, negative numbers will not be sorted correctly. SEARCHING RECORDS. If you would like to find an occurrence of a particular set of characters, you may do so by selecting the Search... option from the Utilities menu. You will be prompted for a line of text which will be the target value. Next, searching will commence at the record following the record under the text cursor. All fields are checked to see if they contain the target value. If a record is found that contains the target value, the text cursor will be moved to the begining of that record. Page 8 IMPORTING AND EXPORTING DATA. Nearly every program that manipulates data files has its own peculiar disk format that it keeps the files in. This causes a problem when you are trying to get data from one program to work with another program. Fortunately, there are a few data formats that have been fairly widely adopted for just such an exchange of data. If you have another program that you would like to have interchange data with this program, check to see if your other program can import and export data in the following format: "element1","element2", ... "elementN" "element1","element2", ... "elementN" etc. where elements 1 through N represent one data element per field per record. Textual elements are enclosed in quotes, but numeric elements need not have quotes. Also, elements are separated by commas. If your program can handle this format, then your in business. Just select the Import data... and/or Export data... option from the Utilities menu. ENCRYPTING AND DECRYPTING RECORDS. If you keep information which you would like to ensure remains confidential, you can further these ends with the Encrypt... option under the Utilities menu. While encrypting, you will be prompted for a sentence to be used as the key. This can consist of any printable characters. Make sure you choose as a key something you will definitely remember. After choosing a key, the screen will show your database as a bunch of strange characters. You should now save and close the file. To restore the file to a legible form, simply repeat the exact same process using the same key. DELETING GROUPS OF RECORDS. Sometimes deleting records one at a time is just too clumsy. When this is the case, you may want to consider the Delete marked option in the Utilities menu. This function will tell you how many records are marked and ask you if you really want to delete them. UNMARKING ALL RECORDS. Selecting the Unmark all option from the Utilities menu will cause all records to be placed in the unmarked state. REPORTING. Manipulated data in memory is fine, but a database file's most convenient form is on paper. In addition, a fancy report can be very impressive. Unfortunately, database programs which provide sophisticated reporting are often difficult to use. On the other hand, this program's reporting facilities are anything but sophisticated. However, the end reports can be quite satisfactory. The reason is that you have the option to send the report to a disk file. Then, you may use a word processor, such as 1st Word, to tailor the raw report to your exact needs. This has the advantage that rather than having to learn a difficult database reporting method, you may use a simple reporting method and a word processor that you already know how to use. There are two basic types of reports that you may run on this program. One is a columnar report, and the other is a text merge report. A columnar report has all of its data arranged in vertical columns. Each record printed takes one line in the report. The data elements are printed with a width that you specify using the subfield dialog. If an element is too short to fill this width, it will be padded to the right with spaces. Also, an additional space will be placed between each field. A special type of columnar report is the standard report. Rather than specifying the subfields you want printed, the standard report just assumes you Page 9 want all fields printed in their display order and with their display width. The standard report is the easiest report to run, and most closely resembles a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get report. A text merge report is one that merges information from a database file with an existing text file. An example of this is a report that fills in the spaces of a form letter. Mailing labels can also be generated using a text merge report. The first step in running a text merge report is preparing the necessary text file. You may use any word processor to prepare your text file. It is usually best to save the text file in ASCII. In 1st word, this means turning the word processor option off. For each place that you want a data element inserted into your text file, simply place the two character combination /?. For example, a file to make mailing labels might look like this: /? /? /? /?, /? /? Then, when running the text merge report, you would select as replacement fields: first name, last name, street, city, State, zip. Page 10