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GS-Base Mini-Review

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wraith808:
Citadel5 dropped by to offer a 50% discount on GS-base until April 8th.  A database?  For less that $20?  And 50% off?  I had to try this...

Basic Info

App NameGS-BaseApp URLhttp://www.citadel5.com/gs-base.htmApp Version Reviewed12.1.5Test System SpecsWindows 7 64-bit/32-bitSupported OSesXP/Vista/7/8 32-bit/64-bitSupport MethodsForums - http://forum-eng.citadel5.com/ and e-mail.Upgrade PolicyFree upgrades for 12 months - not sure if upgrade after that is full price.  Update from the Author: Upgrading: After 12 months current users can purchase a newer version at any time @ 50% off.Trial Version Available?Limited Trial version is available - Limitations listed: http://www.citadel5.com/trial.htmPricing Scheme$19.95 (bulk pricing available) - http://www.citadel5.com/ordering.htmAuthor Donation Linkwraith808
GS-Base Mini-Review


GS-base is a personal generic database application.  It touts size of tables and speed with up to 12 million records in a table and 2047 fields in one record.  It uses a format that looks much like a spreadsheet for entry, and supports calculations and formulas in fields.  It has a wide variety of support for industry standard file formats, and stores the database in an industry standard zip file format.  GS-Base is a database that is for the most part aimed at people that use excel or other spreadsheet formats, but want to create a database.  It can be used for a wide variety of purposes- no specific function is inbuilt, though there are many tools for export, forms, and merging.


Mini-Review of Usage

At the time when I first decided to use it, I'd just started playing The Elder Scrolls Online, and wanted to quickly create a lightweight database that I'd be able to use to collect information on alchemy reagents quickly, but still ensure I'd still be able to use the data when I had time for a more robust solution.  In a couple of hours, I'd created a database that served that purpose, and output the sum of the final data to a format that I could reference during the game.  It was very intuitive for the most part.  

The database is stored in a zip file- by default, it uses industry standard .zip, but can use .gsb instead, though the internal format remains the same.  Inside the .zip, the database format is plain text, comma delimited, which is a plus.  Blob fields are stored in their entirety in their original format- another plus.

My Database
GS-Base Mini-Review

The field dialog, with a standard field
GS-Base Mini-Review

The field dialog, with a calculated field
GS-Base Mini-Review

I've enclosed the plain text of the main database table, and the PDF output of a dump of that table.

There's a lot more in the way of functionality that I haven't touched- it happened to come up for sale when I had a use for it, and wanted to give an initial impression to see if I wanted to purchase it.  Even at the normal price of $19.95 it's a steal.  But at 50% off, it's a no brainer.  You just don't find this level of functionality in a database for $10.  I'll update as I use more- but I definitely recommend it from what I've seen in my brief trial. I've already purchased the full version, and just from my use so far, count it as a gain.

mouser:
Thanks for posting this!

40hz:
Interesting!!! (I might as well confess I'm a database junky  ;D).

And at $10 with the discount, it seems worth buying a license just to check it out. 8)

wraith808:
I updated with the (very generous) upgrade terms.

oblivion:
I saw this via the newsletter yesterday, so I'm coming late to the party.

The spreadsheet style is a bit of a culture shock for me -- I'm used to record-oriented databases rather than Excel-ish stuff. However, the developer is extremely responsive and finding a modern database package that can cope with multi-gigabyte files in all of the various xbase formats I have a lot of legacy data in is a complete delight. Particularly seamless support for Clipper and FoxPro memo file formats (as of today!) is more than slightly marvellous!

I'm less sure about the techniques for building joins between tables -- but that's probably more a culture thing than a real problem, and for people who are migrating from Excel's db management methodologies, the mechanisms for doing stuff -- particularly pivot tables -- will seem like home from home.

Overall: excellent!

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