All this talk about DataBases

[Joe Lewis Wilkins]

Curiously, Sarah,

That was a method I used to archive HC records, rather than just  
saving the entire stack with all of it's overhead. That would be a  
good idea for archiving Rev records as well. In the HC days I did it  
because I was archiving data on 3.5" 400k or 800k floppy disks. It  
was mandatory. Now it just makes good sense.
Thanks for the reminder,

Joe Wilkins

On May 29, 2007, at 8:07 PM, Sarah Reichelt wrote:

>> Guess I'm going to start up another great controversy. Again I'm
>> hearkening back to my HC days. When it was first released, one of its
>> main claims to fame was the question as to whether or not it WAS a
>> database. Certainly, it had all of the attributes and features of
>> one. Even with SE30s as a machine; and, with some 2,000 records/
>> cards, HC performed acceptably fast considering the simplicity of its
>> implementation and subsequent use. So, my question is: has RR done
>> such a poor job at duplicating this functionality that we cannot get
>> along without specialty DBs in MOST instances? If it has, then at
>> what record level must we consider using these other DBs? I realize
>> that there ARE many applications that will need a greater capacity,
>> but not the average one created by the "average" Rev user. I'd sure
>> like to know.
>
>
> HyperCard excelled at the on-card-per-record sytle of data storage.
> Revolution is not so good at that. However there are many other
> options before you need to consider using an external database.
>
> I like having a hidden stack with my data in fields on the stack.
> If the fields are going to hold a very large amount of data, then
> consider using custom properties or text files.
>
> One good way of transferring a HyperCard database to Rev is to export
> the data from each card into a text file with each card's data taking
> one line of the export. Pick some delimiter to separate the fields and
> if your data contains linefeeds or tabs, replace them with some other
> symbol. Then Rev can read this file into memory and operate on it at
> great speed. Coming from HC, you will love the filter command :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Sarah