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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!gummo!whuxlb!jph
From: jph@whuxlb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.cpm
Subject: Re: dBASE II (two reviews) - (nf)
Message-ID: <1260@whuxlb.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 6-Aug-83 11:55:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: whuxlb.1260
Posted: Sat Aug  6 11:55:56 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Aug-83 18:10:25 EDT
Sender: jph@whuxlb.UUCP
Organization: Bell Labs, Whippany
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#R:linus:-25000:whuxlb:14900002:000:1361
whuxlb!jph    Aug  6 11:55:00 1983

Another interesting product on the market is Knowledge
Man from Micro Data Base Systems. I have used it and it
has at least as many features as DBase II and the
commands appear to work with any mix of of data types
(numeric, string, character). It allows up to 255
fields per record which allows a lot more flexibility
than Dbase II.

A command language is proved that has IF..THEN.. ELSE,
WHILE..ENDWHILE, TEST..CASE, dimensioned variables, and
parameters to a procedure. Very nice flexibility is
provided by the SORT and INDEX commands for ordering of
a file and the records in a file can contain 'virtual'
fields which are computed by other variables either in
the record or defined by the user. It is also easy to
extract data from the data base so that it is readable
by a BASIC program or input to VisiCalc (Knowledge Man
contains a spread sheet and the 'cells' are available
to the procedures that a user can write).

One of the nicest things is the ability to have more
than one file/table open at once and to be able to
'join' corresponding entries from various tables.

It will be interesting to see how well received this
product is. I would recommend it to anyone who is
considering DBase II (since it cost about the same). I
have been running it on a 192K IBM-PC with some large
tables and it holds together well.

Jim Holtman

...harpo!whuxlb!jph