Many Cards Versus One Card and a List Field

[Sarah Reichelt]

> I'm interested in your thoughts on a design question.  Most of my
> stacks are database-like, and it is as important to be able to access
> many records resulting from a search as it is to view the individual
> records one at a time.  So my question is, given the speed of
> Revolution as compared to good old Hypercard, is there any big
> advantage to storing data from each record on individual cards as
> opposed to maintaining, say, a tab-delimited list field that populates
> a single card with the record's data when that records line in the
> list field is clicked?  (Is that how Apple's Mail program works?)  Is
> the use of one card for each record faster?  More reliable in some
> way?  The reason I ask is that even with many cards, I usually need a
> list field for navigation and searches, and I have to build checks to
> make sure the data is synchronized between cards and the list field.

I would recommend the list field-single card method for Rev. With
Hypercard, marking cards by finding was super fast. With Rev this is
not the case. I wrote a small database (about 4000 records) in
Hypercard for some friends, using the one card per record method. When
they changed to OS X, I tried just importing it into Rev but searching
for multiple matches was unworkably slow. I converted it all to a
single card plus data field and it was all good again. Plus the data
is easier to back up and restore if I send them a program update.

Cheers,
Sarah