By Hal Goldstein
My 200LX Phone book file is 200K in size. Even using the FASTDB program on my double speed palmtop, searching and loading can take a long time. Here are several suggestions for faster access.
First, create Subsets which will help you get at needed data quickly. For example, I have Subsets called HP, Company, and Fairfield. HP consists of HP employees, in each record of which I have placed HP in the category field. Company consists of all Phone records, but sorted by company. (When defining such a Subset, just leave all fields blank. This Subset allows me to easily search for contacts within a specific company.)
For my home town of Fairfield, I look for a 472 or 469, the two Fairfield, Iowa exchanges, in the phone and business field. (I usually don't bother putting Fairfield in the city field when I originally enter the data. I can easily screen out the few extra records with 472 or 469 in them pulled up with this method.)
The first time you access a Subset it can take a long time. However, the database apparently creates an index, because subsequent accesses of the Subset occur very quickly.
I have brought down my load and search time to virtually zero using Harry Konstas DBV n database viewing program. DBV quickly loads and searches a Phone or other database file. It requires less than 150K, so it can run as an application from Application Manager (More). (I use Software Carousel). The downside is that you cannot use both the PhoneBook and DBV at the same time. The solution is to back up every night and use DBV on the backup file.
I have further refined the solution. I use a macro to back up the PhoneBook file. The macro first opens each Subset in my PhoneBook, closes PhoneBook, and from Filer backs up the file. The reason for opening each Subset is that DBV requires a Subset to be opened before it can take advantage of quickly accessing the Subset.