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Article #7988

A Super-huge, transferrable database?

#7988
From: Mark Thompson
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 1991 05:41
37 lines
2436 bytes
I'm looking for a specific type of program:

Does anyone know of a database program which:

  1. Can handle *HUGE* files.  I'm planning on having about 10,000 entries,
     each of about 500 bytes.  That's a 5 Meg file.  Yowza!
  2. Is transferrable to the IBM platform.  I'm planning on eventually
     distributing this database (not the program, but the data itself)
     to a large set of users, many of whom do not own Macs. So somehow,
     the data must betransferrable (at either the IBM end or the Mac end)
     onto an IBM platform.
  3. Is relatively simple to use in terms of entry and lookup.  I don't care
     about complexity in printing or base design, but lookup *must* be
     *very* simple - type in my match criteria and go, then result in a list.
     Speed isn't too much of a factor, but it can't take an hour to search
     the 10000-entry database.
  4. Is (perhaps) relational.  There are two separate types of data which
     are either going to be linked (ideal) or actually have the smaller
     table as a set of columns in the larger (acceptable, but the extra
     overhead in terms of space/speed is a minus).
  5. Is basically flat, though. There are only two tables in the whole 'base,
     and what with the number of entries, I'd like something which ends up
     looking like a spreadsheet, I think, where I can see a few columns
     of many entries all at once.

Along these lines, I was mildly impressed with a demo of 4th dimension,
 except I don't think it's transferrable (?), and the relational aspect
 seemed a little strange.  Has anyone heard of a package called Panorama?
 How does that stack up?

I have seen Double Helix and Filemaker, and neither one impressed me.  Double
 Helix was incredibly confusing, and Filemaker wasn't powerful enough.

Any help or comments people could throw my way would be most appreciated...

Mark Thompson
thompson@m.cs.uiuc.edu
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Message-ID: <1991Mar24.054113.1987@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!m.cs.uiuc.edu!thompson
From: thompson@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Mark Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: A Super-huge, transferrable database?
Keywords: database
Message-ID: <1991Mar24.054113.1987@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 24 Mar 91 05:41:13 GMT
References: <1991Mar24.041147.23182@news.nd.edu>
Sender: thompson@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
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