• Getting Started (68 pages)
• User's Guide (326 pages)
• Programmer's Guide (372 pages)
• Language Reference (1040 pages)
• dBASE for Windows Object-Oriented Primer (83 pages)
• Quick Reference Guide (98 pages)
• Using Crystal Reports for dBASE (36 pages)

A minimised icon on the desktop is the Command icon, appropriately presented as the Genie's magic lantern. This is where the old familiar dot prompt facility now lives, presented in an improved layout consistent with the Windows approach. On maximising this icon, the user sees two windows: one for input, the other for output, with each window able to be resized as the user needs (Figure 3).

You have the choice of working through the Navigator or, for those who still like the dot prompt, via the Command window.

Two other major icons on the Speed Bar are the Expert and the Tutorial. The Expert provides facilities for automatically generating queries, forms or reports, guiding the user through steps in their correct sequence. As the name implies, the Tutorial takes you through user selected areas of the product you wish to look into.

The number of Icons on the Speed bars is consistent with the current function being performed. As an example, six icons are used for setting the sequence of objects, and four for object alignment within the Screen Designer. About the only criticism I have of the product so far is that the explanation window for the speed icons is at the bottom of the screen, while the speed icons themselves are near the top.

User's Guide

After skipping through the Getting Started manual, the User's Guide is the next logical read to help get a more detailed feel for how the new version hangs together. The manual takes you through four parts designed to get the non-programmer, like me nowadays, productive: (I) Tables, (II) Queries, (III) Forms and (IV) Tools.

Although I have an Xbase programming background, I now prefer to develop applications systems from a higher level, without having to actually write any program code. After I decide what I want, I get into point and click mode and dBASE 5.0 generates event driven Windows based applications for me. Most, if not all, of my needs in this respect are covered in the User's Guide.

Among the several easy to use tools within dBASE 5.0 is the Forms Designer. Having set up a table, you can easily create a form to update and view its contents. Using one of three alternate operations, the Form Expert is invoked to lead you through a default form layout process. A default screen is created from the table(s) linked to your screen and you are then free to alter the form to your own liking. A control palette comprising Text, Entry field, Combo box, Spin box, List box, Push button, Check box, Radio button, Line, Rectangle, Browse, Editor, Image, Vertical scroll bar, Horizontal scroll bar and OLE gives you all the major types of objects you need to put on a screen.

The properties of each object (field or field label) on the screen are accessed in the Design view by clicking the right mouse button on the particular object (Figure 4). This invokes the Object Inspector wherein you can specify Properties, Events and Methods for each object, including the form itself. These properties, events and methods are the Object-Oriented (O-O) equivalent of all the parameters - and then some - that went into the old @ SAY/GET in former dBASE versions. Objects/fields on the form are linked to database fields through the object inspector/data link property (Figure 5).

The click of a speed bar icon then gets you directly into the Run window (Figure 6), where you can immediately add, modify or view the data in your table(s). Another click and you are back in the Design window to fine-tune that form. Unlike earlier versions of screen designers where you saw Xs or 9s representing fields from your database, the Design view shows you actual data from the first record in your database. So you are seeing live data as you design your form.

Programmer's Guide

This manual is the natural progression from the User's Guide. It is aimed at those who wish to learn the dBASE language, or for existing dBASE programmers wishing to update their knowledge on the latest techniques of the language.

After an introductory chapter on programming in dBASE, the manual is presented in five parts plus 3 appendices: (I) Program basics, (II) Objects and classes, (III) Forms, (IV) Tables and (V) Windows environment.

dBASE 5.0 has an excellent new feature, called Two Way Tools, that anyone who has ever used a program generator has been dying to see. Program generators provide users with the ability to paint a screen or report, the bread and butter of database applications, and generate a program with the click of a mouse or key. The application generator takes the screen or report specifications and generates a source program which is then compiled and executed.

Traditionally, this type of program generation has been a once-off affair, whereby the eager programmer would tweak the generated source code to reflect enhanced processing requirements which could not be accommodated by the original application generator. Having advanced along this route, the original specification would be valid no longer, with further changes having to be maintained through the source code.

If a person is wont to step outside the safe haven of the screen/report specifications and modify the source code generated by dBASE 5.0, all is not lost, as the Two Way method reflects the source code changes back in the specifications.

I am pleased to say that I do not need to avail myself of this piece of functionality as the toolset provided by dBASE 5.0 gives me all I need to generate multitable screens and reports without recourse to programming.

Language Reference

One is overwhelmed just by looking at the quantity and scope of functionality in this well presented set of documentation. In addition to initial chapters on Introduction, Language definition and Syntax conventions, the manual covers:

• 529 commands and functions
• 26 system memory variables
• 7 pre-processor directives
• 21 pre-defined classes
• 175 properties

• Programs
• Memory variables
• Error handling and debugging
• String data
• Numeric data
• Date & time data
• Expression and type conversions
• Table basics
• Fields and records
• Table organisation
• Printing
• Input/output

• Forms
• Objects
• Keyboard and mouse
• Colors and fonts
• Environment
• Disk and file utilities
• Low level access
• Pre-processor
• Shared data
• Windows programming
• Classes