Adding an Index File

Adding an Index File

To define an index to be associated with a database, click the Add Index File icon from the menu bar from the Database Structure Management screen or choose File | Add Index File from the menu bar.

Each database can have up to 7 index files associated with it. Index values may be composed of a single field or an expression involving several fields.

Example: If your database is a customer database and the structure contains customer information fields, such as FIRSTNAME, LASTNAME, ADDRESS and STATE, you may want to organize your data by a certain category. By organizing the data, quicker and more efficient searches can be done. If you want to organize all customer records by their last names, the index value would be the field LASTNAME. If you have several customers with identical last names, you may want to organize the records by last names as well as first names. The index value will be the expression: LASTNAME + FIRSTNAME. All customers with the same last name will be grouped together. Within this grouping, customers are alphabetically arranged by first name.

The following are two requirements for an index file:

Index File Name

A unique name for the index file. The file name can be up to 255 characters as supported under Windows 95b and higher.

Embedded blanks are not permitted.

Value Indexed

The name of the field to be indexed. For the purposes of grouping records into categories.

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