Filing made easy

Micro-Phile, from Ephagy Software, is an inexpensive and easy-to-use electronic filing system.

It will cope smoothly with basic record addition, modification, and deletion, and browsing. Sorting can be carried out on one of two key fields defined at set-up.

Record retrieval, based on the current key. allows a degree of fuzzy search by defaulting to the nearest likeness when there is no exact match.

Its greatest asset, however, is the selection option. This allows up to 10 combinations of search criteria.

This includes numerical operators, using English rather than symbols - greater than, less than and so on — the logical operators AND and OR, and the more unusual contains/does not contain, begins/finishes with, and precedes/succeeds. Averages, totals, and even standard deviation can be requested for inclusion in the output, and the results of the search may be sent to the screen or to a printer.

Unfortunately the format of the output cannot be customised, and this area of the program constitutes its crudest aspect - although a close second is the screen presentation, which, if you like being dazzled by the colours of the rainbow, should suit you nicely.

> You can modify a file structure with the Transfer option, which allows all or parts of your data to be saved for use by a different data file.

The documentation, although somewhat higgledy-piggledy, includes usable reference and error message sections, an index, and a quite respectable tutorial.

So for straightforward filing and output, Micro-Phile, with its standard report generator, its fairly flexible query facility, and some simple stats options, should be more than adequate.

> If your application is some thing more sophisticated, I would say that, despite its name, neither you nor your BBC Micro is likely to fall in love with it.

But at £14.95 it certainly represents good value for money.

Katherine Cranford