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Mastering DataPerfect by Ralph Alvy Foreword Written by Lew Bastian Copyright 1997 |
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For those of you who don't know of me, I'm the original developer
of DataPerfect. I am amazed at the very existence of this book.
I appreciate Ralph's continued work heading the CompuServe DataPerfect
users forum, and his cross country DataPerfect seminars. I applaud
his perseverance in producing this work, especially since it is
for a product that several companies have tried to pronounce Dead
On Arrival. This book is sorely needed, since many powerful features
have been added since the last manual was published. Ralph covers
just about everything, even the most recent updates. He includes
extending the usability of DataPerfect with DPMouse©, an
excellent companion product. As with any product, people have
found clever ways of doing things with DataPerfect. Using such
techniques makes the difference between applications that almost
work and those that are complete and polished. Ralph has been
in a position to accumulate this wealth of invention and pass
it on to other developers. No previous book attempted to show
the DataPerfect developer how to produce masterful applications.
Ralph does this in his seminars, and capably expands his seminar
notes and experiences in the latter half of this book. I know
from personal contact that many developers have been anxiously
awaiting its publication.
DataPerfect has had an amazing resilience. In spite of being
a DOS product in a Windows world, DataPerfect continues to win
new friends. To a large extent this is due to the excellent online
help available on the CompuServe forum hosted by Ralph Alvy (WPUSERS,
Section 11). I am grateful to him and the many DataPerfect experts
that frequent that forum, helping novices (and each other) with
the intricacies of database applications.
DataPerfect continues to slowly evolve. It owes its popularity
to its rapid application development features, its high reliability
with large numbers of records, and its ability to be simultaneously
used by hundreds of network users. Many users have tried to move
to other products and, after experiencing one failure after another
with them, been forced to return to DataPerfect. I wish DataPerfect
had a more modern user interface. Some work is being done to correct
this deficiency. The existence of DPMouse© has helped considerably.
A. Lewis Bastian, Jr.
DataPerfect Lead Developer
January 11, 1997