Msg: 6403 *Conference*

03-30-96 15:02:30

From: RICHARD HANSON

To : ERVIN MILLER

Subj: REPLY TO MSG #6401 (PGMS)

You are correct ... genealogy is a database application.  In this case, you
will probably want a fully relational database program vs. a flat file, but
then it all depends on how look at your data.

A mailing list would be an axample of a flat file.  Each record holds a unique
entity and the file is not related at any level to another file.

Your phone bill is an example of the result, or report, from a relational
database.  One file contains your billing information.  Another, totally
separate file contains transactions you generate each time you make a phone
call.  At the end of the month, they [the phone company] relats the two files
to generate a vertual file called a phone bill.  The generation involved
looking up your phone number from the first file, then matching it with all
occurance [records] attributable to that number from the second file.

I'll leave the subject here and let you thing about it, except to add that
TBase on the Ulitmate ROM II, is a fully relational database.  The database on
the SuperROM is flatfile, as is CRDFIL ROM and PC versions.  I suspect that
most of the database programming in the library is also flatfile.

Back to you ... -Rick-