Today we continue our discussion on DBMS Packages. Software packages called Data Base Management System (DBMS) has been developed long before micro-computers to handle the problems of maintaining and integrating large volumes of data on large machines. The most important distinguishing feature of a DBMS package on personal computers is that it provides a very high level language interface which can be learned by a user who is not a computer programmer. We have already talked some important command in our previous post. Today we will talk on other command like quit, use custlist etc….
..QUIT
Next day when we start the dBASE III programme, we must first indicate which file we want to use, otherwise dBASE III will not know which file we are interested in. The command for this is
..USE CUSTLIST
Now let us say we want to query on the customer data for extracting different types of information. Here is a sample list to illustrate how easy it is.
One has to learn only few additional features to see how sales and receipt transactions can be used to update amount due for each customer. The dBASE III package also has REPORT command for producing user specified reports. With the command verbs, dBASE III also provides conventional programming features like IF-THEN-ELSE, WHILE-DO. A complete set of dBASE III programmes can be designed to implement a medium sized application in a couple of weeks.
Computers in Management 