Ask Sam 6 Freeform Database - Review Of Ask Sam Software By John Clyman

ASK SAM 6 STANDARD EASY TO USE FREEFORM SEARCHABLE DATABASE
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Ask Sam 6 Freeform Database - Review Of Ask Sam Software By John Clyman

Ask Sam Professional Freeform Database Software

Reviewed By John Clyman

Ask Sam Professional is an anomaly among databases. Most databases enforce strict structure, but Ask Sam focuses instead on managing disorganized information, especially free-form text. Still, Ask Sam can handle many of the tasks of flat-file databases (such as maintaining contact lists) and offers a rudimentary document-linking mechanism through hyperlinks. Although we don't recommend it for applications where you need multiple tables, extensive data validation, or complex reporting, Ask Sam is undoubtedly useful for managing e-mail and document archives along with more traditional flat-file applications.

An Ask Sam database is a collection of documents and related resources. Some 18 predefined formats, such as clippings, phone messages, and bibliographies, help get you started. The Entry Form Wizard lets you give a basic structure to your documents by defining fields, but unlike in traditional databases, Ask Sam's fields are loosely typed and support only minimal validation. Not all documents in a database need to include the same fields, but defining fields lets you filter records and generate reports based on this metadata. Ask Sam does not support a full-blown query language and doesn't include an expression editor for creating complex filters, but it does let you create and save Boolean searches.

Ask Sam's most appealing feature is its ability to import rich text from a wide variety of sources, making it easily and extensively searchable. We imported thousands of e-mail messages from Microsoft Outlook (one of five supported e-mail clients) and were quickly able to form complex searches on the text they contained.

Ask Sam lets you specify proximity (for example, searching for the word academy within ten words of awards) and provides fuzzy (sound-alike) text-matching capabilities. We also used Ask Sam to get at the contents of Word documents and Adobe Acrobat PDF files (though we observed a minor loss of formatting in some PDF files). Ask Sam's import options let you break up a single file into multiple documents and automatically create fields from regularly occurring elements, such as a To: or Date: line in a document.

Ask Sam's reporting capabilities include groupings, subtotals, and conditional sections both for individual fields (you could set a zero value to render as none, for instance) and for whole report sections. Of course, since it isn't relational, Ask Sam won't let you query across sets of mutually exclusive fields. The closest thing Ask Sam has to relational capability is its hyperlinks, which let you link to static resources such as other documents or external URLs, fire off searches, or exercise a menu option. Beyond that, it has no scripting capabilities, but the Professional version does expose Ask Sam as an ActiveX control that you can embed into an external application.

Ask Sam can't import or export XML, and even its support for HTML is limited. We were able to import HTML pages but lost elements such as tables and graphics. And when we exported a database as HTML, it was dumped out as a single continuous file rather than an organized collection.

If your primary purpose for using a database is organizing flat-file information with an emphasis on free-form documents and their metadata, Ask Sam is a good fit.

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The ideal solution to turn your information into an easy-to-use searchable database! askSam is not a traditional database. It's a whole new way to manage information. Traditional database software is designed to handle structured data. It requires you to pre-define a structure and force you to shoe-horn your information into this structure. askSam requires no predefined structure or field lengths. askSam is easy to use. You can search without learning a query language. You can create reports without programming. askSam is flexible. You can combine both free-form and fielded information in the database. askSam is the ideal application to organise your information. askSam is a different kind of database - a free-form database designed for users rather than programmers. askSam makes it easy to turn anything into a searchable database: email messages, word processing documents, text files, spreadsheets, addresses, Web pages, and more.