askSam Gets Faster and Fuzzier

Dave Andrews

Version 3.0 of askSam for Windows adds numerous features that should appeal to those who publish electronic directories, policy manuals, instruction books, and other text-based products. Highlights of version 3.0, which is primarily a 16-bit Windows application but also runs under 32-bit Windows, include faster searching, support for fuzzy searching, and the ability to import graphics images in a variety of formats ( see the screen ). For downloading documents from the Internet, askSam 3.0 lets you import, create, and export documents in the HTML format used on the World Wide Web.

Version 3.0's support for full-text indexing greatly improves its search capabilities in databases of several hundred megabytes: Searching a 500-MB indexed file, for example, now ta kes about a second. Also, support for fuzzy searching lets you locate information when you're unsure of the spelling. For example, I used a fuzzy search to find several documents in an electronic archive of BYTE articles with only the approximate spelling of the author's last name.

askSam lets you define data-entry forms, so end users can rapidly summarize documents they add to a database. To simplify the entry of data into a document database, askSam 3.0 supports pick lists. For example, when you're filling in an author-name field, you can pick a name from a pick list instead of typing it in.

Once you've created an electronic book, you can generate a variety of reports (e.g., all documents created by a specific author). Because askSam is not a relational database, you can't directly generate a report that summarizes information from several electronic books (e.g., all documents created by an author in both the accounting manual and the ethics manual).

But with the program's ability to gener ate hypertext links across files, you can create an electronic table of contents for navigating through numerous document databases. The full-text indexing should make askSam 3.0 for Windows a stronger product for corporations wishing to create 100-MB or larger electronic books.

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WHERE TO FIND

askSam Systems

Perry, FL
(800) 800-1997
(904) 584-6590

http://www.asksam.com/asksam.htm

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askSam 3.0 for Windows

screen_link (67 Kbytes)

Standard version (without full-text indexing), $149; Professional version (with indexing), $295; version with freely distributable run-time readers, $1495.