While we were developing (with Delphi*) our product called Gerente, developed to manage embroidery shops, we looked very hard for a product that could help our customers to backup and maintain their databases. We also needed to update the customer's metadata (tables fields, indexes and relations). We did not find anything with all the above requirements, so we developed DbTools.
DbTools is a set of tools to maintain the Paradox* tables. In the early future, we are going to provide dBase support, and maybe support to other formats, according to the need of our customers. These tools can be used into your database applications to improve the data safety and data quality. Your application can communicate with DbTools very easily, automating the execution of tools on the database, such as Update, Copy, Retrieve, Backup, Restore and Pack
The end user will be able to use DbTools. The user interface is very simple and very easy, just one window centering all the control. Below you can see it:
This product has the following tools available only for Paradox* databases:
Update: to release a new version of a database application, generally the developer needs to update the database structure in the customer machine during the upgrade process. Those changes are a real headache, the metadata (or fields, indexes, referential integrity, etc.) must be updated, but the customer's data must be kept intact. This tool can accomplish all that for you in an automatic way.
Copy: it is used to save a database copy on the same disk where the database is placed. The advantage of this tool is that if any damage in the main database happens, then the local database copy (or safe copy, as we used to call it) can rapidly be substituted for the damaged one.
Retrieve: it is the counterpart of the Copy tool, and serves to retrieve the safe copy, making the database ready to be used again.This is a fast process, actually it is faster than the Copy itself. The local copy uses little space in disk, less than the main database, because only the data itself is copied, not the indexes and the like.
Backup: it does safe database copies to external media. It can use floppy disks, zip drives and other devices of data storage. The data is stored in multiple volumes and uses the reliable Zip format.
Restore: it is the counterpart of the Backup tool, it restores all the data stored in external media. Actually, it is faster than Backup itself. And the data do not need to be restored to same disk from where it was saved.
Pack: the data which is deleted in the database is not really removed, it is just marked for later deletion. This tool can really delete the records from the tables, with the reliability that all the remaining data will not be damaged.
All the tools can be available through your database application as if they were part of it. For your application, it is very simple and very easy to communicate with DbTools. The application developer can use our standard specification called DTC (Dynamic Tool Connections), which makes possible to use DbTools from another application. For Delphi* and C++Builder* users, it is nothing more than the component TDbTools, with all properties and methods needed for the complete access to DbTools. For users of other languages, it is now available the access via DDE, and in the early future we will make available the accesses via DLL and OLE Automation.
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