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GS-Base Mini-Review

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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.

oblivion:
Just waking up an old thread: I'm still using this, the product is still being developed. I bought a second licence so a colleague and I can use a database I built for the storage of user details, and she (by no means any sort of techie!) finds it works well for her as well as me.

My favourite thing right now is its ability to make custom drop-down lists for fields and either to specify a finite set of possible entries (like a field that can be True or False) or one that can be told to take anything it hasn't seen before and add it to the list of acceptable entries. Multiple selections are possible, you can set the order manually or have the list sorted alphabetically, and checkboxes are a brand new addition.

The Form view of the data is I think getting easier to work with. It's still really fast, and although I still miss being able to do the things I used to love Approach for, this is still a database with the best bang for the buck out there.

I intended to post a screenshot of a form view of a data item and discovered that my colleague has been playing with some of the design elements. Specifically fonts. Oh dear. Still, I guess it illustrates something:

GS-Base Mini-Review

There are four dropdown lists: three for predictable / static choices, one (job title) for a good way of accumulating things that might be reusable in the future and will save typing.

There are a few calculated fields -- UserID is either surname+first initial all in lower case (as illustrated) plus any content in the UIDSuffix field so you can deal with the 50th John Smith who rocks up... but if Login Name has content, it'll be that instead.

NewPass is a calculated field chosen by gluing together a randomly chosen attribute (usually colour) and a randomly chosen animal, from a separate table in the database. The calculation that handles that is very Excel-ish


--- ---=concatenate((vLookup_ex("PasswordConstructor",(int(randBetween(0,22))+1),"Row","PassA",0)),(vLookup_ex("PasswordConstructor",(int(randBetween(0,22))+1),"Row","PassB",0)))
and as the random number generator does what they generally do, it calculates a new password (a) any time anything happens, and (b) any time you press F9, so we pick one we like, ^C and ^V into the IssuedPwd field so it can be recorded.

What we do with this is use it to spit out a CSV of any records where Done = False and feed a mailmerge with it, after which Done is set to True.

Would that be useful to you? Probably not. If  DIY databases were popular, there'd be more of them and people would use spreadsheets for adding up. But if it's the sort of thing you need, you might not find a more cost-effective solution anywhere.

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