There have been surprisingly few database programs written for the Dragon since the late arrival of the disc system, and most of those packages that did reach the shelves (can you remember buying Dragon software from a shop?) failed miserably due to either poor programming or weak program design. Having got yourself a reasonable database program, what do you use it for? Computers are ideally suited for sorting and searching through large amounts of information - but what kind of information do most home computers have that requires a computer to sort it out for them? Why, keeping track of the wonderfully witty and informative articles in our beloved Dragon User magazine I hear you both cry!

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Pulser Software have now released Magbase, a database program which has been specifically written for indexing magazine articles and comes either on its own or with a choice of data files that contain an index of the articles from within the covers of such esteemed journals as Dragon User and Dragon Update. The program is available on cassette and disc versions are available for the usual systems including DragonDOS, DeltaDOS and CumanaDOS.

The program is written in Basic, which is reasonable for small database situations, and has been around long enough that there are no 'bugs' in it. Records may be searched for using either a larger string or range of record numbers, and output, as you would expect, may be directed to either the screen or the printer. The printer routines are, by default, set up for Seikosha or Tandy printers but this may be re-configured to suit your own system. All the other usual database functions are provided to allow sorting, record modification and addition etc, etc.

Trying to remember which issue a particular article was in is virtuaily impossible. Magbase will not only find it for you but will point out other articles on the same subject. Magbase must be worth its asking price for the Dragon User index alone without the database software. The only real snag wiih the Magbase program is its elegance. Having selected and confirmed an option it is annoying to be asked to press a key to start. It's a small gripe I know, but when you use the program for more than a few minutes it becomes very annoying.