The database file used throughout this and the next several articles is called GENERAL.GDB and is available on this issue's The HP Palmtop Paper ON DISK as well as on the Web at www.PalmtopPaper.com/download.htm. Enter GENERAL in the search field and click Fetch! The file is about 110K bytes in size and contains a wealth of information. Much of the information in the file has appeared before in the pages of The HP Palmtop Paper. About 10% of it is new. Be sure to get a copy of the database. That way you can play along as you read this article.
To construct the database, I began by looking at the HP Palmtop's "User's Manual" on the 1999 CD InfoBase..
I searched for and bookmarked the relevant sections of the electronic User's Manual that dealt with the "Database", "PhoneBook," "NoteTaker" and "WorldTime."
After reviewing what was in the User's Manual, I used the CD InfoBase to do a complete search on the words "database", "phone", and "NoteTaker" and came up with almost 800 citations including everything from passing references to complete articles on the database applications. I also referred to my own databases called BTIPS and QTIPS. and found about 40 or so tips dealing with the database apps.
It was a bit overwhelming and left me scratching my head: how to present this information without making it a re-hash of the User's Manual.
It took about two hours to decide on the layout of an exemplary database file and create it. It took several days to organize the information that would go in the database and another day or two to develop and test eight new tips. In the end, I had a database with over 60 data items all of which pertain to the same topic.