Campbell's database is relational. This doesn't mean it has close ties with other databases, but means you can call up details of a record on one file by referring to a related record on another. The use of relational files may not seem obvious at first. Take an example, though If you were keeping an index of books on a Masterfile database, you might have five by JRR Tolkien. Each book record would need to have the full author's name against the title This would mean having the letters "JRR Tolkien" in your file five times. Multiply this by all the other authors whose books number more than one. and ' you should see you're wasting quite a bit of space. Masterfile allows you to set up a parent file with all the authors'names on it. Two-character references are used to link the names to child records, on a different file, which have details of all the book titles. The program can sort a file and search through it using a system of selecting and deselecting records. You can therefore create any sub-set you like by choosing only the records you want to keep on file. You can keep totals of fields in a file, but you can't perform any other calculations on numeric data. Screen layouts and report formats are put together by selecting options from menus not as easy as designing a record on screen, but just as effective. A very competent database. AA | 
