Good, cheap (or free) database?

[SoAlive]

I collect quotes. I've been keeping them in a Word document and occasionally organizing them by the reference's last name, but this isn't really effective for finding them, and the document is getting huge.

Can anyone recommend a simple, easy to use, and inexpensive database that I can use to store and organize these items? The only searchable fields that I need are the name of the reference, the quote itself, and a few topical keywords.

I could hunt around on the internet, but I really value recommendations. Any out there?

[Sven Johannsen]

DataOnTheRun is dead easy to use and only costs $15
http://www.biomobility.com/dotr4.htm

There are of course others, but I think for your application DotR may be the easiest.

[Ripper014]

There was a free one called... Granada Soft XS...

http://www.grandasoft.com/

I don't know if it is still free but have a look... it comes as two programs... Designer and Forms...

[SoAlive]

Thanks! I'll try both. I checked on the GrandaSoft programs and they are still free. Might be overkill for what I need, but I'll give it a shot.

[famousdavis]

An Excel spreadsheet might do the trick, too. Just a few columns and you're on your way.

[RD100]

There was a free one called... Granada Soft XS...

http://www.grandasoft.com/

I don't know if it is still free but have a look... it comes as two programs... Designer and Forms...

I downloaded this today, and it is a pretty incredible utility !!! :mrgreen:

XS Designer runs on your desktop, and lets you design a database. You just drag and drop labels, text fields, etc onto a blank form. Then when you save the form, it immediatly is loaded to your PPC, and is displayed in XS Forms. XS Designer It is around 8meg

There is even an SQL query utility in XS Designer, which lets you build your own queries for searching the data. UNBELIEVABLE!!! But you might need a little SQL programming experience to understand it.

XS Forms runs on your PPC, and lets you view the database. It is around 1meg. It can run any SQL queries you've built into the form.

So it could take a little time understanding how to use it if you never worked with a previous database design utility, but once you know how it works, you will be amazed !!! :D

The desktop utility kind of resembles a Visual Basic design screen, if you've ever seen it. I just quickly designed a Book Collection Database Form in around 20 minutes, and it works great! :way to go:

This is one of the most advanced utilities I've ever used on my PPC! I can't believe it's free ??

[Brad Adrian]

There was a free one called... Granada Soft XS...
Great idea, dude! My doctor wants me to start keeping better records about my migraines (foods just prior, weather conditions, etc.) and nothing else I've tried really has decent forms layouts on the PPC screen.

My doctor and my head thank you.

[rhmorrison]

I just quickly designed a Book Collection Database Form in around 20 minutes, and it works great!
How about posting your FORM so others can try it out. I've been meaning to create a database of my books for a long time now! Maybe this would give me the start impulse that I need to really do it!

[RD100]

I just quickly designed a Book Collection Database Form in around 20 minutes, and it works great!
How about posting your FORM so others can try it out. I've been meaning to create a database of my books for a long time now! Maybe this would give me the start impulse that I need to really do it!

Copy the following file to your PC, by right-clicking on the filename, and use "Save Target As", and rename the .txt extension to .gsf


BookCollection.txt (http://www.geocities.com/rd100_online/BookCollection.txt)

Copy the BookCollection.gsf file to your \My Documents\PocketPC My Documents folder (the one used by ActiveSync).

Then start up XS Designer on your PC, and open the BookCollection.gsf form using the OPEN command in the File Menu at the top.

To test it on your PPC, first install the XS Forms application on your PPC, then in XS Designer, select File > Test on PPC, from the File menu. The form will automatically be copied to your PPC, and XS Forms will start up with the form displayed.

The XS Forms program also comes with Sample forms, but I haven't tried them.

My BookCollection form was done in only 20 minutes, so it isn't anything special, but it works !!! :D

You can search the BookCollection using several queries I created.
They use asterisk wildcards, so if you want to search for an Author, but don't know the correct spelling, you can type "S*" to pull up all Author's beginning with "S". Or you can type "*S*" to pull up all Authors with an "S" in their name. NOTE ... you must use a wildcard * for all searches, even if you enter the exact spelling, because of the way my SQL is currently coded. I use a SELECT ... WHERE ... LIKE, so it requires an *, otherwise you will get an error. So if you want "Smith", enter "Smith*".

Once the search results list is displayed, you can also double-tap on any entry to bring up the full information of the book into the main form.

Book information is automatically saved once you enter it, so there is no need to click a separate "Save Record" button.

XS Designer has very good help screens, so I recommend reading them. They give examples of SQL queries, so you will understand how to create them for your own forms.

http://www.geocities.com/rd100_online/BookCollection01.jpg

[Ripper014]

Not only are there sample forms... but if you look in the site there was a place where people were posting forms they created...

Like I said I have not been there for a year... so it may or may not still be there... For those of you interested it would be worth investigating...

[rhmorrison]

Not only are there sample forms... but if you look in the site there was a place where people were posting forms they created...

Like I said I have not been there for a year... so it may or may not still be there... For those of you interested it would be worth investigating...
Right you are, the Form Gallary (http://www.grandasoft.com/Community/Gallery/default.aspx) is still available and can be added to. They do have one Books (http://www.grandasoft.com/Community/Gallery/ShowForm.aspx?ID=181) database form available.

[RD100]

Books databases are easy to design. You just drag and drop whatever fields you want in XS Designer.

Here is my latest version:

http://www.geocities.com/rd100_online/BookCollection02.jpg

[RD100]

The only real drawback with XS Forms and XS Designer, is it doesn't have any real way of sharing the data with a Desktop PC.

That is one of the benefits of Pocket Excel, since you can edit the spredsheet on either platform.

XS Forms has the ability to export a database to an .XML file, but it has no way of re-importing data from the Desktop PC.

I did find a nice free Windows utility which lets you view and edit the .XML file on your desktop: http://www.xmlfox.com/download.htm

It lets you view the .XML file in a grid format, similar to Microsoft Access.

So at least you can view the XS Forms data on your desktop.

But I don't know of any way to load the .XML desktop file back into XS Forms.

So all the maintainence of the XS Forms data needs to be done on your Pocket PC.

It just means you need to pick and choose which types of data are worth maintaining solely on a PPC.

But with the above being considered, I still consider XS Forms and XS Designer to be a "top notch" database utility.

[RD100]

MAJOR UPDATE .... regarding my previous post !!!! 8O

You can view and edit the XS Forms databases on your Desktop PC in Microsoft Acess. Wooohooo !!! :D

I was able to copy my BooksCollection.CDB database from my PPC to my Desktop PC, and ActiveSync converted it to a .MDB file, which Access can open. I then edited a field in Access, and deleted a row, and copied the the .MDB file back to my PPC, and XS Forms opened it with no problems, and showed my newly edited data.

XS Forms and XS Designer are getting better by the minute !!! :mrgreen:

[rhmorrison]

Books databases are easy to design. You just drag and drop whatever fields you want in XS Designer.
It's not the mechanics that is hard to design a good database it is the Look & Feel and complexity. Your first form was too colorful. The form in the collection is way too complex and detailed. Your latest version is a big improvement. Simple, and with just the essential info. It's now getting closer to meeting my needs.

[RD100]

Books databases are easy to design. You just drag and drop whatever fields you want in XS Designer.
It's not the mechanics that is hard to design a good database it is the Look & Feel and complexity. Your first form was too colorful. The form in the collection is way too complex and detailed. Your latest version is a big improvement. Simple, and with just the essential info. It's now getting closer to meeting my needs.

I made the original colorful just to experiment with the different design features available. I had never used XS Designer before, so I wanted to try out many of the various features.

I think your best bet is to download my 1st database form that I provided a link for, and then attempt to redesign it to look like my 2nd more detailed one. It really is easy once you play with XS Designer a bit. XS Designer has excellent help screens which will guide you if you get stuck. I can always answer questions as well. The main thing to note between the two versions, is I deleted several text boxes from the original, and replaced them with combo boxes, which have a dropdown list to choose from. I also added a date picker box.

There really is no " computer programming" involved. You just insert labels, text-boxes, combo-boxes, etc onto your blank form, and save it. Then click "Test on PPC", and it will be copied to your PPC and will work just a like a professionally written program.

The only minor programming required is if you want to be able to do Searches, then you need to create an SQL Query for each search. It is fairly "English Like", so it probably needs no real explanation. The LIKE command below allows you to enter a partial search string with a wildcard '*', so you can enter "S*" and it will give you all results beginning with "S".

Here is an example of a Title Search SQL Query I used.

SELECT textTitle, textAuthor, InternalId
FROM BookCollection
WHERE textTitle
LIKE "@askuser@";

I created 3 additional queries for Author, Category, and Publisher by just changing the WHERE textTitle to WHERE textAuthor, etc.

It's the old like expression, "give a man a fish ... feed him for a day, teach him to fish .... feed him for a lifetime".

[Sven Johannsen]

RD100, you need to play with the ability of AS to synchronize Access DBs. It is in there because the handheld flavor of WinCE does have Pocket Access. It will actually allow your books DB to work much like the contacts sync. If you change a record on the PPC and a different one on the PC and then sync, those changes will go in both directions. It will eliminate that copying back and forth.

It is best to create the data structure on the desktop, as you do need to include a unique key field that is set to 'no duplicates', to allow the sync mechanisim to uniquely identify records. Play with it with a test DB before commiting real data to it.

P.S. for those who are not SQL gurus, if you use Access, the query builder is very friendly. It has the option of showing the SQL statement that you built in the builder. That can be looked at and understood in most cases and copied and pasted if nothing else.

[RD100]

I originally tried to set ActiveSync to directly sync all of my Access files, but it had an error, and couldn't complete the sync. I still haven't figured out what caused it. It may have been some other .CDB file on my PPC that it just can't convert, and not the one created in XS Forms.

So I then just manually copied the XS Forms .CDB file to the Desktop PC, and ActiveSync's .CDB conversion routine kicked in, and converted the database to an .MDB file, which I could open and edit in Access.

The XS Forms databases contain many additional columns, in addition to the ones I create. So, I don't think I can start by creating the table myself in Access. The primary index it creates appears to be a very large hash key, so I have no idea what it contains. And there are many other columns as well with unrecognizable data. So I think I just need to let XS Forms create the database on the PPC. But at least I do have the ability to view and edit columns, as well as delete rows, using Access. I could even potentially create a SQL "View" of the Table which excludes the miscellaneous columns, to keep the Access screen limited to only the columns I created.

[Sven Johannsen]

When you initially drag the DB to the desktop, the wizard should give the option of syncing or just copying. I might play with it myself. Been using SprintDB a bit and it does what I need, but XS stuff seems pretty neat. I'll have to try it out.

[Lex]

$20 but 'ListPro' does a lot. Thread here: http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23455&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

It's a DB app, outliner, list-maker.

[RD100]

When you initially drag the DB to the desktop, the wizard should give the option of syncing or just copying. I might play with it myself. Been using SprintDB a bit and it does what I need, but XS stuff seems pretty neat. I'll have to try it out.

When I copy the XS Forms PPC .cdb database to the Desktop, the activesync wizard pops up, and it tries to create a sync file, but the process ends up with errors which prevent the file from being syncable. But the database does get copied successfully to the desktop, even though it is not a syncable file.

I also discovered that when I open the database in Access, I can add, change and delete rows, and then copy the database back to the ppc, and XS Forms works fine. I just put unique numbers beginning with 1 in the primary key field for all new rows I add in Access. And XS forms uses my keys with no problems. So the Hash Key I mentioned in my earlier post doesn't seem to be required.

Another thing I did was take my current book collection, which I have in Excel, and saved it as a DB4 database. Then I opened the database in Access, and wrote a simple INSERT / SELECT SQL statement in the Access Query window, which added all of my book collection data from the DB4 database to the database created in XS Forms. It worked fine. I then manually typed in unique keys in the primary key field in Access for all the rows I added. Finally I copied the Access .MDB database back to my PPC, and XS Forms opened it fine, and showed all of my book collection data.

I am really loving this XS Forms!!! :D