GS-Base Mini-Review

[Steven Avery]

Where are we today? - Let's put aside the download issue.

The forums last post was six months ago, and some gibberish code shows up and the captcha does not show up.  Busted?

The program works good. 

A feature and a quirk. I just noticed how the long note sets up tabs on the right, rather elegant. (And one reason that program like Listpro does not compare.) It does change the height of the row, by about 5x, because of having a long note and it tells you blah blah in the space.  Is that a feature, a quirk, or something you just live with?

Last Bits du Jour Dec, 2017

"Citadel5 @martian
There are no unanswered questions on the support forums. Rarely it may take up to a few days before an answer is posted. "

Yeah, but is the forum busted?  A vibrant forum is key.  We can write you, but it is not the same thing.

If not GS-Base, what?  AirTable is one of the good web databases, but they do not have the heads-down data entry.  Back to Filemaker, Alpha, Access etc?  Anything else in the GS-Base niche?

Steven

[wraith808]

I think it's perfectly good as a database, and am still using it to record things for which I need to use such functionality.  It's a great deal for the price, and very functional, so I haven't really looked for anything else.

[Steven Avery]

I think it's perfectly good as a database, and am still using it to record things for which I need to use such functionality.  It's a great deal for the price, and very functional, so I haven't really looked for anything else.

-wraith808 (May 22, 2018, 06:38 PM)

I agree that it is the best tool I have seen for flat-file.  Beats ListPro (also a good program for fast entry, search etc) because of a much better note implementation, and some other reasons.

Have you worked with the relational aspect?  Can it produce a workable view where the name of File 1 (Contacts) shows up in the View of File 2 (Events).

Linking Tables
http://forum-eng.cit...pic.php?f=13&t=5

Good discussion.  Looks possible, but not particularly intuitive.  However, the simple drop-down (without search on the drop-down) is very easy, again a plus over ListPro, if I remember right.

[wraith808]

Yes, I've done it in my uses, and while it's not exactly intuitive, it's pretty easy, and once you get down how to do it, easy to do for further implementations.  My only real problem with it is no interface to use from outside the application.  But that's not really a negative of the application- it just limits the use cases.

[oblivion]

From GS-Base's Help:

Creating links between two tables is a special case of using calculated fields and the vLookUp_ex function from the Cross-table summarizing & lookup formula category. It behaves similarly to the standard spreadsheet vLookUp.

I haven't used it much for a while, but I still think it's a very decent program.

[oblivion]

Just a note for anyone following this topic : Bits du Jour have this on offer again right now.

I've found some recent uses for GS-Base that have reawakened my enthusiasm. A bit niche, I grant, but one of the systems I support can only output report data as .csv. GS-Base imports it perfectly, has an option to convert textual dates to date fields at import, handles all sorts of helpful search and filtering options and spits data out in various portable formats too.

The formulae it supports remain very Excel-like and my brain isn't but it's not GS-Base's fault that the syntax my brain is happiest with is different to its style!)

I bought a lifetime license though, so the upgrade policy is no longer an issue for me. I understand the concerns expressed above but still feel that the bang you're getting for your buck is pretty much unmatched

[rgdot]

FWIW
Something Excel/Access failed (row limit) and even the likes of Gnumeric choked on GS-Base opened in a matter of seconds. In this case it is a ~5.5 million rows list of movies, a dataset provided by IMDB.