DBase - Ovation Pro database applet

by Chris Ford


The DBase applet gives database facilities to Ovation Pro. It can look up and combine information from various lists of names or products that you have in a spreadsheet or database program. When sending a mail-shot to a list of people, extra details can be extracted from one or two other files, for example to pick out a list of items, names, etc, associated with a person, and to look up an address (or price, etc.) for each of the items.

A further extension allows records to be skipped if they satisfy some criterion (e.g. some item is blank, or less than a particular value). Another provides conditional text, so a phrase is only printed if some fields in the current record in the mail-merge CSV file satisfy some criterion, or an "s" could be printed if a value is greater than 1.

Other extensions handle citations. Often, an (academic) article cites a number of other texts within the article, and lists them all at the end. Frequently the articles are numbered in order of citation, and these numbers used within the text, and printed next to the full reference at the end. Since the order of the citations is hard to predict when writing the article, it is useful to assign nicknames to the references, e.g. CJBF1, and to use those nicknames in the text, where the corresponding number will be required. The computer then allocates numbers in order of encountering the nicknames.

To use DBase you should have:
 Ovation Pro Version 2.48 or later (preferably at least 2.49);
 A spreadsheet (or database) program that can export a list as a CSV file.

Running the item from the RISC User menu opens an archive containing the DBase applet, a manual in Ovation Pro format and a directory called MergeEx which contains some examples of its use.

To use the applet, copy !DBase from the archive into your !OvnPro.Applets directory and re-run Ovation Pro. Full instructions on the use of the applet are given in the file DBManual which is included in the archive.


Copyright  Chris Ford 1998