In a scan-and-shred type of database, I often find myself wanting to duplicate everything except the image or object field. For instance, I may be filing bank statements, where all the details are the same as last time except for the date and the scanned image itself. Here’s a macro that does this.

Set rec=ActiveRecord
AddRecord
Set recNew=ActiveRecord
For Each fld In rec.Fields
 If fld.Definition.Type=cbxFieldTypeText Then
  recNew.Fields(fld.Definition.Name)=fld
  End If
 Next

I save this macro in the “This Database” section, under the name “Partial Duplicate”. Then, to make things easier for myself, I edit the native format of the database, do Tools > Keyboard, and associate Ctrl+D with playing the “Partial Duplicate” macro. Since Ctrl+D is normally Cardbox’s own shortcut for File > Duplicate Record, this means that I don’t have to change my typing habits.

One refinement: one of my fields, called NUMBER, has an auto-numbering validator in it. If I duplicate that field, the new record will have the same serial number as the old – which I don’t want. So I add the following line at the end of the macro:

recNew.Fields("NUMBER")=""

Now the field will be blanked out, and Cardbox will number it automatically when I save the record.

Cardbox is a Windows program. The Mac is not a Windows computer. These two facts have been a source of frustration to many people for a long time.

We have now done extensive work to make sure that Cardbox is compatible with CrossOver Mac, a product that lets Windows programs run on the Mac without the need to install Windows itself.

The Knowledge Base page now has a “Macintosh” section giving advice on installing and using Cardbox with CrossOver Mac.

If you haven’t already got CrossOver Mac, you can download a trial version.

If you already have a Cardbox licence and want to try all this, you’ll need the very latest build of Cardbox, Build 4259, which you can download here.

If you haven’t already got Cardbox – or you want to get a friend with a Mac to try it out – read about our special offer.

If you have any comments or questions, please visit the Feedback on the Mac page on the Cardbox Everywhere blog.

A small business, or a business whose main activity is not e-commerce, can run into trouble when selling things on the Web. Either it sells everything through a third party (Amazon for books, Handango for downloads, or even eBay) with high transaction costs, unfavourable contract terms, and hidden risks, or it pays a lot of money for a fully e-commerce-enabled web site when all it really needed was the ability to process a dozen or so transactions a day.

The Universalis case study shows how it is possible to start a small e-commerce business at virtually no cost (just the application fee for the credit card processor) and with virtually no programming (just a single Cardbox macro to process the orders as they come in by email).

This lightweight semi-automated approach is secure, fraud-proof, and requires very little time to manage.

When you choose a font in Cardbox, it offers you a choice of all the normal fonts on your computer. By “normal fonts” we mean the ones in which letters look like letters. For instance, w might look like this:

A symbol font is one where the symbols you see don’t look anything like the letters you type. Here is the letter w as displayed in various different symbol fonts:

Cardbox is principally designed for searching and storing text, so to avoid confusion it doesn’t usually show you symbol fonts. But if you really want to see the symbol fonts in the font list, then:

• When using View > Appearance or the Appearance button in the toolbar, hold down the Shift key.
• When setting the appearance for one particular format item (this is the likelier case), open the Properties window in the usual way but then hold down the Shift key as you click on the Appearance tab to open it.

In either case, you will then see a full list of fonts including all the symbol fonts.

The Amazon S3 discussion forum has a thread on using S3 for photographic archiving. Cardbox and S3 make an ideal match for this.

You can have a Cardbox database on your computer that indexes all your photographs (on as many criteria as you like) and contains a low-resolution copy of each photograph (“low-resolution” means whatever you want it to mean – thumbnail, or 320×200 or 640×480 or 800×600) so that you know exactly what you’re talking about. Each record will also have a link to your original high-resolution picture stored on Amazon S3: the link can be of a kind that is inaccessible to anyone but you. Our previous post tells you more about using Cardbox in conjunction with S3.
Basically, to do this you’d need nothing more than Cardbox plus your own Amazon Web Services / S3 account.

A few bonuses:

• If you want one of your customers to be able to download a photograph, you can give them a link to the high-res version: the link can expire automatically at a set time.
• If it’s appropriate, you can even give your customers read-only access to one of the databases. This will let them view your low-resolution pictures and identify exactly the ones you want.

We’ve created a simple sample database that will show this in action. This page has a link that lets you download the database, and it has full instructions on how to get going with your own photogaphic archive.

The project to add Amazon S3 facilities to Cardbox has been completed. (If you’re not familiar with Cardbox then you can read about it here and get a free 1-month trial licence here).

Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. Secure, reliable and cheap, it can be used to store any amount of data, at any time, and retrieve it from anywhere on the web. There is no sign-up fee and you pay only for the storage you actually use.

In the new build of Cardbox that is released today, we have incorporated the following features to make use of S3:

The Cardbox Server (used in multi-user and networking systems) can be configured to back up your databases automatically, at specified intervals, to your S3 storage space. There is no interruption in service during a backup, because the Cardbox Server can back up a database even if it is in use. You can have a single backup copy of the latest version of each database, or you can have a separate backup made each time that the database has changed.

Cardbox itself has a new command that lets you view your S3 storage space and upload, download or delete files. Apart from managing the Cardbox Server’s backups, this also allows you to make backups of files on your own computer.

Cardbox’s VBScript macro system has been expanded to allow you to manage your S3 storage space programmatically. This offers interesting prospects for the future: for instance, a photographic database that stores and displays each photograph at a reasonable screen resolution while the original full-resolution images are held in an archive on S3.

Cardbox can print bar codes in various formats: what about reading them?

There are many barcode readers on the market in a variety of shapes and sizes, and we can't really advise you which one to buy (you have to choose what suits you best), but as far as Cardbox is concerned, they all work in essentially the same way. You scan a code, and the reader interprets the code and "types" it in to your computer just as if you had typed it on the keyboard yourself.

One feature that is definitely worth looking for is the ability for the reader to type extra keystrokes before and after the actual interpreted barcode. Manufacturers often refer to these as "preamble" and "postamble" keystrokes.

Inserting barcodes into a record

Sometimes you may have a number of existing records and want to add barcodes to them. For instance, you could have a collection of objects and be attaching pre-printed barcode labels to each one. Your workflow would then be: pick up the object, find its record in Cardbox, and scan in the barcode.

The obvious and simple way would be to edit the record, go to your "barcode" field, scan the barcode, and save the record.

If you have a barcode reader that can do programmable preambles and postambles, you can make the process easier by making the preamble type the keystrokes for editing (Ctrl+E, Ctrl+G followed by the field name) and making the postamble type the keystroke to save the record (Ctrl+S). That way you won't have to touch the keyboard: just look at the record and scan the barcode, and the barcode reader will do everything else for you.

Using a macro

You can create a macro that uses the InputBox command to ask you to scan a barcode, and then does whatever you want with the result. It might be more intelligent than just putting the scanned code into a field. For instance, it might search for the code – if the code is already in the database, it can show you the matching record; if the code isn't already in the database, it can create a blank record and fill in the barcode field. (If you are dealing with books then it might even look up the book in Amazon's database in order to fill in more details, as this posting shows).

As we've just described it, the sequence of operations will be: play the macro, scan the code, and hit Enter to tell the macro that the code has been scanned. But you could use preambles and postambles again: first associate the macro with a keystroke, then tell the barcode reader to send that keystroke as a preamble, then tell the barcode reader to send the Enter key as a postamble. That way you can do everything you need by just performing a simple scan and you won't need the keyboard at all.

Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. Secure, reliable and cheap, it can be used to store any amount of data, at any time, and retrieve it from anywhere on the web. There is no sign-up fee and you pay only for the storage you actually use.

This posting describes how we are enhancing Cardbox to take advantage of the facilities that Amazon S3 offers.

If you don’t already know Cardbox, it’s a fast, straightforward database designed for end users. Anything you can list, Cardbox can store. Its particular strengths are powerful text indexing and the ability to attach photographs and scanned documents to every record. Cardbox is used by everyone from individuals and small businesses to multinationals and United Nations agencies, and there are Cardbox users on every continent including Antarctica. The Cardbox web site tells you more.

When Amazon S3 was released we knew immediately that this was something we wanted to use. The next question was: faced with unlimited, reliable data storage space, how could we extend Cardbox to take advantage of it? We had several ideas, but the one that promised the greatest benefits to the largest number of users was automated backup. (We will describe the other ideas in future posts).

The trouble with backup has traditionally been that it is something that someone has to do. Except in the most sophisticated organisations, someone ends up physically having to burn a CDROM or DVD, or even manipulate magnetic tape. Even when the backup has been done the problems are not over, because the backup has to be stored somewhere safe but accessible, organised so that you can find the right DVD again when you need it.

Automated backups

With Amazon S3, we have been able to add an automated backup facility to the Cardbox Server. In the Server’s configuration pages you tell it how often you want to back up, and the name of the location in S3 where you want the backups to go. And that is all. Cardbox does the rest.

The beautiful thing about letting the Cardbox Server do its own backups is that service doesn’t need to be interrupted while the backup is going on. Cardbox users can continue searching and browsing their data, and even making changes, during the backup. Cardbox knows enough about its own behaviour to be able to store the changes that users make while at the same time ensuring that the backup is a consistent picture of the entire database at one particular instant.

Retrieving from backup

The part of Cardbox that users actually see and interact with is the Cardbox Client – which we usually just call “Cardbox”, full stop, since as far as most people are concerned, the Cardbox Client is Cardbox.

We have extended the Cardbox Client in two ways. First of all, we have added commands to Cardbox’s VBScript macro system to allow objects to be listed, downloaded, and deleted (we have also included uploading, in case sophisticated macro writers need it). Secondly, we are implementing a window that shows a simple listing of all backed-up files and lets the user download or delete selected files. (Typically this feature would be under the control of a responsible administrator, since once an object is deleted from S3, it is deleted).

Summary

• Automatic backup at regular intervals.
• Secure and reliable storage on Amazon S3.
• Simple viewing and management of all backed-up files.
• Downloading on demand.

Things to be done before release

The features described here are in our internal development version of Cardbox. They will be incorporated in the production version (and formally announced to Cardbox users) soon. The principal work to be done is to add appropriate pages to the Tools > Options and Server Configuration windows, and to add a new command (Tools > Management > Amazon S3) to allow interactive management of backup files.

The future

The main future enhancement we are considering is incremental backup. If you have a database of 100,000 photographs or documents, the chances are that only a few will be added or deleted in one day, meaning that out of a 10GB database, only a few megabytes have changed. Sending only the changes to Amazon S3 will save time and reduce data transmission costs. This feature already exists in Cardbox (if you download a database to your PC from a server with Tools > Management > Download, only the changes get downloaded) but we are waiting to implement the equivalent in S3 until (1) Amazon add some necessary features to their service and (2) enough Cardbox users are using the service to make the development worthwhile.

The macro for looking up data in Amazon is now complete, and you can read a description and download it from here, together with an empty sample database for you to experiment with.

Anyone who has to maintain a database of books will find this useful (at least if the books are new enough to be listed on Amazon) and the principles behind the macro can be applied in other situations where you want to fill in Cardbox data from an online search.

It’s done, and I’ve extracted 46,000 emails from our archives and imported them into a Cardbox database. It took 8 minutes in all, and every word in every email is indexed for fast retrieval. The Cardbox database is 231MB in size.

I won’t be posting a public spam database yet because of the trouble of going through it to make sure that nothing private has found its way in accidentally, but if anyone wants to see one then let me know: I’ve now set up a dummy email address specifically for spam and nothing else, and once the spams start coming in I’ll look at making a Cardbox database out of them.