Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!natinst!bloom!bobd
From: bobd@bloom.UUCP (Bob Donaldson)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Free Text Databases
Summary: variation
Message-ID: <640@bloom.UUCP>
Date: 1 Jun 89 17:37:22 GMT
References: <1158@itivax.iti.org> <76@sc2a.unige.ch>
Lines: 46

In article <76@sc2a.unige.ch>, fisher@sc2a.unige.ch (Markus Fischer) writes:
> In article <1158@itivax.iti.org>, kam@itivax.iti.org (Keith A. McNabb) writes:
> > Would anyone be able to recommend a good, efficient, and fairly
> > powerful FREE TEXT database for a PC-AT compatible (MS-DOS) or 
> > Sun/UNIX environment?  It should have no restrictions on record 
> > length and should allow pre-existing flat ASCII files to be 
> > easily incorporated.  At the same time, it should support the 
> > definition of various fields, so that searches may be more
> > selectively qualified, and it should support numeric operators.
> 
> ...  I simply used the
> word processor I was accustumed to : WordPerfect.  This might seem a little
> strange, but it really has a subset of database functions : sort, extract
> by conditions, numerical variables and modify structure...  Of course, one
> doesn't expect full statistical functions, or even calculations...
> 
> The main problem is actually that the structure of the data cannot be defined,
> which means that the user must be carful to put each field in the right place.
> In other words, you will have trouble if several people are to enter or edit
> the data.
> 
> The main advantage is of course the quality of printouts : you are working
> with a read word processor !  (i.e., the fields can contain formatting
> codes...)

As a variation on this theme, I can suggest a hybrid.  Use your favorite
word processor to generate each "database" entry, the store the data in a
'real' DBMS - I would suggest Empress/32 (runs under DOS & Sun/UNIX), since
it handles large variable length fields quite well.  A little preprocessing
would both do some QA/QC on the data entry & data format, and also allow
the extraction of fixed-length fields in the database which could then be
indexed.  The wordprocessor files would be stored complete in a variable
length, unprocessed field (type = bulk in Empress).  This allows you to
include all of the formatting codes, etc.  I expect that other vendors have
similar capabilities, but check WHATEVER you choose carefully - I have found
a lot of un-documented or well-hidden limitations in the use of these
unstructured data types in some packages.


-=-
Bob Donaldson              ...!cs.utexas.edu!natinst!radian!bobd
Radian Corporation                    ...!sun!texsun!radian!bobd
PO Box 201088       
Austin, TX  78720       (512) 454-4797

Views expressed are my own, not necessarily those of my employer.