Until recently there has been a dearth of good disc database
programs for this machine but now the DFS is in good supply
and understood, they are being produced by the dozen.
This is a very capable database, flexible enough for most uses,
yet simple for the beginner. The use of menus makes life easy and
the well-written 54-page handbook complements the program.
BetaBase supports up to 200 fields in each record with
maximum length of 2,048 bytes. The number of records depends
upon the specification you give and the capacity of your disc; a
blank disc gives 1K less than its capacity for storage.
Search facilities are comprehensive with eight types, although
the use of wild cards is not fully supported. Features of the
system are 'Redefine' and 'Transfer' routines, offering
powerful manipulation of data. The print routines are quiet
comprehensive but not easy to use and there is no flexibility of
screen display.
Overall I think anyone could use this database with excellent
results, especially as there is a demo file.
5th June 1984
