The structure is under perpetual change. A few new fields are added or changed now and then. Structure for database: E:\DBASE\ALL\ALL1.DBF Number of data records: 9200 (growing) Date of latest update : xx/xx/yy Field Field Name Type Width Dec Index 1 NAME Character 36 N Sometimes the name begins the software company making the program, like MS WINDOWS, MS EXCEL etc. for MICROSOFT-products. Search on products in the database are made on the fields NAME and FUNCTION. Searching can also be made on parts of the name and parts of the function like "CEL" in "MS EXCEL" or "modem" in the function-field 2 LANGVER Character 3 N Country of origin, USA, MAL for Malaysia, SWE for Sweden etc. 3 VERSION Character 5 N Latest known version (for the author). 4 FNAME Character 12 N Filename 8 characters + 3 extension. ??? denotes version number. Star (*) denotes number of letter in a serial of files 5 EXPECTED Character 5 N Sometimes the product is not out in the market yet but it is announced. 6 MYVERSION Character 5 N Authors own notation. Blank in the distributed edition. 7 PRODUCT Character 5 N SOFTW, HARDW or CDROM: Software, hardware or CDROM. Sometimes a product is a combination, however only one sort is entered. 8 FUNCTION Character 70 N Short description of the product. You can search on parts of the FUNCTION contents or parts of the NAME of the products. If you search with an empty string the first product in the group is shown. 9 MANUFACT Character 24 N Manufacturer of the product. Sometimes a product or a company is bought by another company or the manufacturer has changed its name. Logical variables for the database: 10 BIT32 Logical 1 N 32 bit applications 11 WORD Logical 1 N Word processor or powerful editor. 12 SPREADSH Logical 1 N Spreadsheet 13 DATABASE Logical 1 N 14 HYPERTEXT Logical 1 N 15 LANGUAGE Logical 1 N Computer language like BASIC, COBOL, PASCAL etc. 16 CASE Logical 1 N Computer aided programming 17 OS Logical 1 N Operative System like UNIX, MS-DOS etc. 18 OS2 Logical 1 N OS/2 19 INTERWEB Logical 1 N Internet. The name of the field is chosen because the name INTERNET is already occupied with info about file site. 20 MACINTOSH Logical 1 N No this is not a MACINTOSH database, but a few products are entered, mainly products important for communication PC-MAC 21 ECONOMY Logical 1 N Financial programs 22 TSR Logical 1 N Terminate stay resident programs. Important if running DOS. Less important if running Windows etc. 23 INTEGRATED Logical 1 N Spreadsheet, word processor and database and sometimes communications etc. 24 UTILITY Logical 1 N Probably the largest group in SoftBase 25 SPECIAL Logical 1 N Any software that it is hard to put in an other group, like genealogy, astronomy etc. 26 NETWORK Logical 1 N Sometimes just indicating that the product has a special version for Network and sometimes that it is for use only in networks. 27 MAIL Logical 1 N E-mail mostly but also address-software. 28 COMMUNIC Logical 1 N Communication. 29 STATISTIC Logical 1 N 30 MATHEMAT Logical 1 N 31 ELECTRONIC Logical 1 N 32 TECHNICAL Logical 1 N 33 SCHOOL Logical 1 N 34 DTP Logical 1 N 35 SELFSTUDY Logical 1 N 36 GAME Logical 1 N Not very many games. 37 TAXES Logical 1 N 38 SELLING Logical 1 N Sales Tool 39 ADMINISTR Logical 1 N Administrative software like sales ledger, accounting etc. and sometimes also administration of network software etc. 40 CHART Logical 1 N There is another field "GRAPHICS" but Graphics is used also for all Windows software. Other fields for graphical applications are PRESENT, IMAGE and DRAWING 41 CAD Logical 1 N 42 PROJECT Logical 1 N 43 PIM Logical 1 N Personal information manager, small address-database, calendar etc. 44 GRAPHICS Logical 1 N All MS WINDOWS software are considered "graphics", Other fields for graphical applications are PRESENT, IMAGE, DRAWING and CHART 45 WINDOWS Logical 1 N 46 MENUPROG Logical 1 N 47 ANIMATION Logical 1 N 48 ANTIVIRUS Logical 1 N 49 ACCOUNT Logical 1 N Accounting 50 CHILDREN Logical 1 N 51 DRAWING Logical 1 N 52 EDUCATE Logical 1 N 53 FAX Logical 1 N 54 FREEWARE Logical 1 N 55 FORMS Logical 1 N 56 FONTS Logical 1 N 57 HYPERMED Logical 1 N Hypermedia. Not updated since few products are announced as hypermedia. See also hypertext. 58 IMAGE Logical 1 N 59 MEDICINE Logical 1 N 60 MULTIMED Logical 1 N Multimedia 61 MAPS Logical 1 N 62 OCR Logical 1 N 63 ORGCHART Logical 1 N Organizational charts 64 PRINTER Logical 1 N Printer utilities etc. There is a special field for fonts. 65 PRESENT Logical 1 N Presentation software. 66 SECURITY Logical 1 N 67 SOUND Logical 1 N Voice or voice recognition or music. 68 SHAREWARE Logical 1 N Available on most local BBS:s 69 TRANSLATE Logical 1 N Human language. Dictionaries, translation etc. 70 VIDEO Logical 1 N 71 HOME Logical 1 N 72 BARCODES Logical 1 N 73 ARCHITECT Logical 1 N 74 INFO Logical 1 N 75 DECISION Logical 1 N End of logical variables. 76 LOCAL Character 10 N Code for the local supplier if any. Especially hard to get any information about local suppliers in Malaysia. However more and more newspapers have computer information lately 77 LOCAL_SIN Character 10 N 78 LOCAL_US Character 10 N 79 LOCAL_SWE Character 10 N 80 LOCAL_MAL Character 10 N 81 CURRENCY Character 3 N 82 CURR_SIN Character 3 N 83 CURR_US Character 3 N 84 CURR_SWE Character 3 N Most often SEK, which means Swedish Kronor 85 CURR_MAL Character 3 N Most often MYR, which is the same as Ringgits or RM Ringgit Malaysia 86 CURRENCY2 Character 3 N Listprice currency, most often USD. 87 CURRENCY3 Character 3 N Update price currency, most often USD. Sometimes these prices are special offers for a limited time 88 CUR3_SIN Character 3 89 CUR3_US Character 3 90 CUR3_SWE Character 3 91 CUR3_MAL Character 3 92 RATING Character 12 N Mostly PC Magazine's rating if more than one number Average between 1.7 and 2.9 is normal, painted blue on the screen. Excellent product: rating is painted green. Highest average is 4. Less good product: rating is painted red. Lowest average is 0. Anything below 1.7 in average is painted red. However one should read the test-results in the magazines before condemning a product. The product could have been tested for another purpose than what the product is originally made for. 93 PRICE Numeric 7 N Cheapest or cheap or local price. 94 PRICE_SIN Numeric 7 N 95 PRICE_US Numeric 7 N 96 PRICE_SWE Numeric 7 N 97 PRICE_MAL Numeric 7 N 98 PRICEUSD Numeric 7 N Normally official list price in USD 99 PRICEUPD Numeric 7 N Normally price for upgrade in USD 100 PRICUP_SIN Numeric 7 N 101 PRICUP_US Numeric 7 N 102 PRICUP_SWE Numeric 7 N 103 PRICUP_MAL Numeric 7 N 104 WANTS Logical 1 N Private information, blanked 105 HAS Logical 1 N Private information, blanked 106 REF1 Character 15 N 107 REF2 Character 15 N 108 REF3 Character 15 N 109 REF4 Character 15 N 110 REF5 Character 15 N 111 REF6 Character 15 N 112 REF7 Character 15 N 113 REF8 Character 15 N 114 REF9 Character 15 N The references will probably be less Swedish, more Malaysian and American. PC MAGAZINE USA = PCMAG PC WORLD Malaysia = PCWMAL PC WORLD England = PCWUK (On rare occasions) PC WORLD USA = PCWUS PC COMPUTING USA = PCCOMP Windows User USA = WINUS (When available in Malaysia) Getting a library of the above magazines means that you can make full use of SoftBase. and some Swedish magazines before 1992: Tidningen BIT = BIT IndustriData = INDDAT PCWorld Sweden = PCWSW Mikrodatorn = MIKROD 115 EDCHOICE Character 15 N Editors choice. If not, think twice before you buy. 116 CHEAPEST Character 10 N The prices in Malaysia are often negotiable. Very hard to know where it is the cheapest. Cannot trust list-prices. Most cheap is probably to buy from USA by mail-order, but then there will be problems with local support outside USA. 117 CHEAP_MAL Character 10 N 118 CHEAP_SIN Character 10 N 119 CHEAP_US Character 10 N 120 CHEAP_SWE Character 10 N 121 GENAGENT Character 10 N Normally the manufacturer, but sometimes the local distributor. 122 SALES Character 8 N This shows weekly top-sales in USA. An L after the yymmdd-number means Learning. U = Utility, B = Business and P = personal software. 123 INTERNET Character 30 N More and more Internet file sites 124 COMPUSERVE Character 30 N If a special address for the specific product. There is also one field in the ALLEV database with the same name. Many products have their own address in Compuserve. 125 UPDATE Date 8 N Latest check or change of the record. The information is always changing and sometimes the information is not correct, so please be patient with errors in the information. The author would be very happy for information about errors. 126 TOREG Logical 1 N The authors private notation 127 REG Logical 1 N The authors private notation ** Total ** 724 per record The database ALLEV.DBF for suppliers is self-explanatory and contains information about name, address, phone and fax, "last update", BBS, and 800-numbers, Internet (rare), Compuserve etc. Structure for database: E:\DBASE\ALL\ALLEV.DBF Number of data records: 4800 (growing) Date of last update : xx/xx/yy Field Field Name Type Width Dec Index 1 REF Character 10 N Internal code. Usually the 5 first letters from the Company's name and then 3 letters from the second name and 2 from the last. 2 FIRMA Character 35 N Firma means company in Swedish. 3 ADRESS Character 40 N Address spelled in Swedish way. 4 PADRESS Character 40 N Another Swedish abreviation. 5 PADRESS2 Character 25 N 6 COUNTRY Character 20 N 7 TEL Character 25 N 8 N800 Character 25 N 9 FAXNO Character 25 N 10 TECHSUPP Character 25 N 11 BBS Character 25 N 12 FAXBACK Character 25 N 13 CSERVE Character 25 N 14 INTERN Character 30 N The Run-time version of CA-RET does not allow the same name in two different databases. Internet address for the author. 15 AMERICAONL Character 25 N 16 MAILORDER Logical 1 N Mail order. 17 EDICHOICE Character 12 N Sometimes even suppliers get editors choice. Not only products. 18 SRATING Character 8 N Rating of suppliers 19 UPD Character 6 N Latest update of the record or part(s) of the record. 20 TEXT Character 68 N The text field is so far very seldom used. Could be used for ASP authors and OS/2 suppliers ** Total ** 506 I can not give any guarantee about the correctness of the information. It changes rapidly, limited time for double checking, and some errors are also done in my sources of information, the computer magazines and other sources. Most of the errors depend on lack of information in the magazines or catalogues like suppliers, version numbers, etc. I can also not give any guarantee about the function of SoftBase in combination with numerous different machine and software combinations. It is tested only on the authors machines. Like some shareware-authors say: "I don't promise more than that it can fill up your hard disk." Anyway I hope it can come to use to both professionals and amateurs. Call voice or fax: (60) - 3 - 411-5547 Internet: adam@testad.pc.my Adam Testad No 17 Lorong 2B/27C Section 5 Wangsa Maju 53300 KUALA LUMPUR MALAYSIA