Stack file size

[Robert Brenstein]

>I agree! I think we have very similar problems. The crunch for me comes from
>the following: a few years ago, I (foolishly?) showed a friend of mine a
>very simple old Hypercard Address Book stack that really met her needs. It
>had a "Notes" field, so she could add biographical stuff to her very large
>address book, and, vitally, I had also added an "Extract" button, which
>selectively output into a Word file a mailmerge database of addresses that,
>in their "Notes" field, had a specified tag (three guesses - "xmas" was the
>first choice!). This could be used to print standard address labels.

Really guys. Databases are not soooo difficult. Take a serious look 
at Valentina at least. But not through RevDB but accessing vxcmd 
directly. I have converted a number of HyperCard projects to work 
with Valentina and it was not that difficult at all. Most work was 
coming from us trying to take advantage of relational capabilities to 
the fullest.

>She has a stack of ? 2000 cards. The program and the data are not separated.
>If I dream up an improvement to the program (menus instead of buttons, for
>example), how do I update her? If her data were in a separate entity, no
>problem - I'd simply send her a new standalone, and it would open and read
>her records. All I can think of at the moment is that she sends me her
>current stack, I try to remember exactly what changes I have made in the
>scripting, the properties of objects etc, put all those in, compile the
>result and send it back to her. In the meantime (could be a long time) she
>can't make any additions to her address book, or we're back to Go again.
>
>This just can't be right. Surely it's the point at which the card metaphor,
>great as it's been, has to be developed. The database must be the answer. I
>have no idea what "SQL" is, but there's a lot of talk, so presumably I can
>find out.

What you are describing, program and data separation, is one of the 
primary reasons, aside for more advanced search capabilities, to 
switch from using card-based database to using a database engine. In 
case of your address book, you can most likely retain the logic and 
interface, just replace some lines with calls to valentina. Why? An 
adress book is basically a flat database, so you do not need to 
restructure your data.

Robert