this sort made for the Atari.
It
is
much more like
a general ledger system than
other
programs.
The
special reports and other features available
will
most likely be
of
interest
to
those familiar
with
accounting principles and practices.
The
documentation
is
extensive and
somewhat
com-
plicated. A printer
is
almost a must here.
Recommended
Data
Base
Management
Programs
In its most fundamental form, a
data
base
is
simply a related collection
of
information. This
concept
is
best understood
through
use
of
the
following
example.
Let's take a file card box
with
cooking recipes
stored in alphabetical order. All
of
the informa-
tion
stored in the box
is
like a simple
data
base,
and the method used
to
organize the recipes
(file box, cards, and dividers) could be called a
Data
Base
Management
System (DBMS for
short). The recipes are divided
into
general cate-
gories, such
as
vegetable appetizers, lamb
dishes, chocolate desserts, etc. These categories
are called
keys in the DBMS. In
addition
, each
card in the
file contains one complete recipe,
which
can be considered a record.
The
records
may be further subdivided
into
individual ingre-
dients, called fields.
If
you
actually kept those recipes in
your
com-
puter,
you
could
ask
the computer
to
look
up
all
the recipes in a particular category (key), for
instance,
" Iamb dishe
s.
"
The
more advanced
224
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