I developed a database catalog for a small departmental library at Wayne
State University in the Dept. of Greek and Latin (approx. 1400 volumes).
The library contained books in Greek, Latin and English.  Original works,
translations, commentaries and reference materials.
 
We used Paradox for DOS.  I haven't done any programming in Paradox and just
used their ready functions.  Paradox is friendly in setting up the database.
You can create rather large fields (256 chars.) and as many fields as you would
like (I went up to 25 fields).  They have a form function that allows you to
design the form in a more friendly manner and adjust the colors to attract
attention to certain fields.  The report function is also friendly.  You can
create tabular or free form reports and adjust them pretty easy.  The ASK
function(doing queries or filters) is relatively easy.  I tended to create
a flag field and just marked that.
 
Problems:
In doing queries you must type exactly and entirely the entry.  I could never
get Paradox to do fuzzy or partial queries.  I was always sure that it was
possible but never figured it out.  This is very important especially if you
have multiply people entering data and searching.  Accents: you can enter them
in using ASCII key codes but I had trouble getting them to print.  That can be
a problem if you are working with a lot of foreign texts.
 
I haven't worked with Paradox for Windows.  They took so long coming out with
it that it made us worried that were too many bugs.  We tried Foxpro for
Windows but I found it not very user-friendly.  It is very similiar to dBase
and the dot command programming.  Indexing was hard.  Sorting in Paradox was
very easy and gave the option of creating new databases or staying in the old.
In Foxpro it had to go into a new database and then you had to redo all the
reports.  Foxpro was nice to do searches, you could do a very fuzzy search
and it would check every field and wrap around to check the entire database.
My experience with Foxpro was rather limited so I am probably not the best
one to review it.
 
I was hoping to try to Access (which is supposed to be more friendly) and in
the Windows format.  Using a good Windows font, I ordered TransRoman, I planned
to have the ability to do all the accents I wanted.  Before I could do this
I changed jobs and the database has stayed in Paradox and is used mainly for
inventory control.
 
I'm not sure if this answers your questions, please respond back with more if
you like.  Also, I could send the setup for the database as well as the forms
and reports.  I should warn you that I did not use standard cataloging rules,
but modify to our needs and limited time to program reports.  In the end we
had usable catalog cards that we inserted in pockets in the books.  Also, this
was done on IBM clones.  One of our grad. students created a database in
Foxpro for MacIntosh.  He had a brother in computers do all the programming.
Good luck.
 
Lise Hedin, Documentation Intern, Registrars Office
Detroit Institute of Arts
[log in to unmask]