THE DATAMAGE DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM In light of the many powerful and inexpensive data managers/data bases now available for PC hardware you may ask yourself why anyone would invest two and one half years producing another one. I have the concept of canned software to thank for my rich market as a producer of custom software so I will not knock it. I will simply state the obvious fact that, in order to approach omnipotence, a program must be unreasonably complex and, therefore, expect more computer savvy than your average clerical employee has to offer. It is not the concept of canned software with which I take issue, but its' claim that "THIS PROGRAM/PACKAGE will do ANYTHING/EVERYTHING you want/will ever want to do." That's preposterous, and I don't care if it says ASHTON-TATE! In my best effort to draw a parallel understandable to all I will use the analogy of a transportation vehicle. If design omnipotence is excellence then why don't some well-heeled entrepreneurs pool their resources to produce an all-purpose vehicle? Can you see the ads? "Just imagine sitting in the cockpit of your new YUPPY MAXIMUM! You can cruise the freeway at 200 kliks and, if a traffic jam appears ahead or a policeman irritates you, simply select aviation mode and leave all that frustration behind! Hey, you can blast on down to Montego Bay, land, and select marine mode. In case you can't find a berth to spend the night, select submarine mode and sleep on the bottom!" Sound good? I'll buy one! So, first thing Monday morning, sure enough, the Dawn Valley parking lot is full. Eager to test my investment I select aviation mode and press Return. At 500 feet over the Humber River I remember I don't know how to fly. But I (by reading my YUPPY manual) get to Montego Bay anyhow, land, and, just like the ad said, the place is full up. I wanted to go to work, anyhow. Having slept on the bottom I awake to realize I don't know how to operate a submarine, and starve to death on the bottom of Montego Bay. As these vehicles become more popular the authorities become concerned over the alarming loss of life and property they seem to cause. People are taking off from freeways and whipping into bridges and each other, raining fiery death from the skies on earth-bound motorists. A common problem is accidentally pressing the spacebar while in enterprise mode, blowing away the entire neighborhood! Back at Montego Bay we see that the Bay itself has filled up with YUPPIE MAXIMUMS because of a mistake in the docs where it tells you how to surface in submarine mode, and on page 2217 where it says the radio will work under water. In its only unanimous decision in three thousand years, the supreme court bans these vehicles forevermore. Their three million page dissertation can be abbreviated by saying that, unless you are trained in how to fly a plane you should not be allowed to do so, and, if you are not a computer programmer, perhaps you should leave the manipulation of important business data to someone who is. THE DATAMAGE: DESIGNED TO USE OBJECTIVE #1: MAINFRAME METHODOLOGY The primary objective of this package is to apply mainframe methodology to a microcomputer. Most Mainframe systems consist of both "canned" and "custom" (user-originated) programs. This HYBRID METHODOLOGY offers the user many benefits, and renders the overall system TRULY OMNIPOTENT (in terms of the capabilities of the host machine). Datafiles produced by all the data management systems available to you, as the systems analyst of your micro, are impregnable to popular languages due to the inclusion of program-generated data in the files. Since your program does not "know" where that data starts and stops or what it means you simply cannot access the files. The datafiles produced by this program contain not a single byte of data generated by the program (other than carriage returns, eof marks, etc.) and can be opened and read/written by BASIC, PASCAL, C, ASSEMBLER, etc. Of course, the job of recording files involves recording their format and indexing mode, as well as the file indexes themselves. These reside in separate, sequentially accessed ASCII files that reside in the same dir as the datafile. Therefore they are, themselves, accessible to a program you write, rather than causing the entire datafile to be inaccessible to any program except the program that wrote them. The benefits of doing it properly are many: all the datafiles are maintained in the same manner by the same program. In any system you have datafile maintenance. For example, adding a record to the customer file, changing one that is already there to reflect the correct current balance are both datafile maintenance operations. If we have twenty different programs, all having their own version of datafile maintenance, the poor sole at the keyboard is likely to make many un-noticed errors due pressing keys that do what he now wants to do in another program, but do something else in this one. This system is also cost-effective in that the programs generated will not have to contain datafile maintenance, and therefore cost much less to produce. My estimate is a savings of 30-50% on business software. OBJECTIVE #2: KEEP THE THING SIMPLE! It has been my experience that using a program that you did not FULLY understand can, and soon will be a counter-productive and frustrating diversion. I say that the things we want to do to a datafile need not be presented in a format that renders them usable by only a trained few. THE DATAMAGE offers computer based data storage and retrieval to each and every person in your office. It was purposely designed NOT to do the things that are beyond the comprehension of your average clerical employee with little or no computer literacy. Before I formed my first ideas about what the program would do or look like, I WATCHED people try to operate data management software, and I have noticed that there are two levels of mental activity required of the user of these packages. Level 1, if you will, involves that un-copyable human ability: reasoning. I know that if I specify that the group of records I wish to display/print all contain the two letters "TX" then I will have a list of the persons or firms in Texas. That part is not too hard. Actually, I want to see/print all the people/firms in Texas who owe me money, but the first step is obviously to define the Texas records as a group, then worry about the balance field containing a value of > zero. But, between the two steps I must deal with the software. This expands actual process to include such things as knowing where in the records the province/state data is, pointing the exclusive sort at it, and correctly specifying the comparitor and sort mode option. Most people can wade through that, too, but by the time they sweat their way back to level one they've forgotten where the **** they were, and what else they wanted to do. If that happens to them a couple of times they develop a real aversion to the program AND THE JOB. "That thing makes me look dumb." This program does what you want at the touch of a key, and lays it out so you can understand it all. It has over thirty flavors of function by function on- screen help, and can be used by kids, but is preferred by those of us who have seen first-hand what happens when the program invites the user to perform fatal functions assigned a "computerese" name on the screen. GETTING STARTED: The capacity of the sample is 400 records. For a home user it's a free program. For the business user it's a sample, complete with docs and four sample datafiles. For anyone it is a chance to learn the basics of data management from a program that is very helpful and forgiving. When you un-arced the archive containing THE DATAMAGE this blurb and the docs for the d.m.s. came out along with two .ARCs: PROGRAMS.ARC and DATAFILS.ARC. The programs arc contains the .EXEs. If you have a H.D., create a dir off the root called MAGE. Un-arc the programs arc into it. you can call the DIR by any legal name, but remember you'll wish you had used fewer letters after you have typed it a thousand times. In DATAFILS.ARC there are five arcs. It was necessary to "get fancy" here because the datafiles MUST occupy their own sub-dir. No two datafiles produced by THE DATAMAGE may be recorded in the same dir of the same disk. Attempting to do so will over-write and destroy the first file when the second is copied in. If you are floppy-bound you will want to make a separate data disk. If you are a H.D. user, place your datafiles in sub-dirs off the dir into which you copied your programs. You will want to make five sub-dirs before un-arcing, to create the proper destination. Call them HELPFILS, SDB1, SDB2, TESTIVNT and PUBLSHRS. The instructions reference these files. Simply un-arc the five arcs into the new sub-dirs of the corresponding name. Note that if you don't call the sub-dir holding the help files HELPFILS, you will get no on-screen help. ENTERING THE DATAMAGE Place the programs floppy into a drive and make that drive and root the default, or make the default the dir on C: that holds the programs. In order to operate, the programs need access to COMMAND.COM. If you are using floppies copy your COMMAND to both disks. If you are on the H.D., set a path to a dir that holds command. Type GO and press return. The GO program is the function selector, and provides access to every program in the data management system. Your sample has only #s 1 and 6. Select #1, normal file access. If you are floppy-bound the program will pause for you to insert your data disk into the same drive you loaded from. If not, it will go ahead and present you with a menu of the sample datafiles. Press the up arrow key to select sample database number 1. As soon as the file is loaded press the H key. The program takes over from here with all the help you need. My only suggestion is to use F4 to make a printed map of the structure of each file as you load it. It helps to know where the data is in the record. Pressing Ctrl-F2 runs a MACRO. There are MACROS in SDB2 and TESTIVNT. Select and execute a few macros. You'll get an idea of the power and SPEED of THE DATAMAGE! Then, press Ctrl-F1, and then the H key. You will see that MACROS are written in-flight; while they are executed. I have seen only one circumstance that prevents this program from operating on any reasonably compatible machine: A "TSR" program from Boorland. If you are a dedicated sidekick fan you might write them about it. If you would, please leave comments, etc. for Monte Ward on the bbs where you found this file. To order one (with perpetual free updates) call 812-232-8176.