GS-Base Help > Creating New Databases

To Create a New Database

  1. On the File menu, click New Database.

  2. In the displayed Add Table dialog box, enter the name of the first table.
    Optionally, you can choose to import that new table from another existing file/database in any of the supported file formats.
    To add other tables or folders later, use the File > New commands.

    The Add Table dialog box

  3. If this is a new empty table, you'll be prompted to add at least one field.
    To add other fields later, use the Database > Insert Field and Database > Append Field commands.
  4. Using date/time fields:
    Any Text field containing (as shown below) generic date/time strings can be used as a date/time field.
    This standard/generic format is required by all built-in date/time functions (except for datevalue() and timevalue()) and ensures proper sorting.
    To display and enter dates/times in the local system format and to display the calendar control (see Settings > Options > Editing > Use date picker when editing dates), set the desired "date" or "time" style for such a Text field.
    Text fields containing non-generic dates/times should be converted with the Edit > Convert Field Data > Text To Standard Date String command prior to setting the "date" style.

Field Types Available in GS-Base

TypeExamplesComments
Numeric 123
-123
123.09
1.23e+02

The actual decimal and thousand separators depend on your system regional settings and the current Settings > Locales menu selection.

Max. positive value: 1.8+308
Min. positive value: 2.2-308
Precision: up to 15 digits

Text Dog
short text
1 2 3
11:34:30 PM
7/20/2007
P1Y2M3DT10H30M50S.000
-P120D

Any text containing up to 8169 bytes (*).

When entering date/time and time period values, you must use one of the two string forms:
(1) the current date/time style that you specified for a given field in the "Format / Style" dialog box, for example:
7/20/2007
7/20/2007 23:34:30
or
(2) the generic date/time and period string form as specified by www.w3.org for the (XSD schema) date/time/period data types, for example:
2006-01-31
2006-01-31T13:10:55
2006-01-31T13:10:55.123
2006-01-31T23:30:00+02:00
13:10:00
13:10:55.123
13:10:55-00:30
P1Y2M3DT10H30M50S.000 (which means a period of: 1 year, 2 months, 3 days, 10 hours, 30 minutes, 50 seconds, 0 milliseconds)
-P120D (which means a period of minus 120 days)
PT63H (which means 63 hours)
Long Text  

Any text of any size. By default the text is saved in the Rich Text (*.rtf) format and can contain any supported formatting and inserted graphics or objects.

Right-click the field to display the context menu and available editing commands and options.
Clicking the Edit in External Application command, you can edit the text in the application associated with the *.rtf or *.txt format. Changes are saved automatically after choosing the Save command in that application.

To save only plain text (which may result in smaller files and/or faster loading/saving if there are a lot of entries of that type), change the corresponding option in the Settings > Options dialog.
Images/Files  

Any number of images or any other files. Files other than *.jpeg, *.png, and *.bmp are represented as icons associated with their file extensions.
Use the context menu or the Settings > Options dialog box to turn on/off displaying thumbnails and/or file information (file name, size, modification date).

If you insert some link *.lnk files linking to some disk files and if you later change the location of those target files, you can specify the new shortcut path globally in the Settings > Options dialog.

Right-click or double-click a given object to display the context menu and available editing commands and options.
Clicking the Edit in External Application command, you can edit the object in the application associated with the file type of that object. Changes are saved automatically after choosing the Save command in that application.
Code  

Any text of any size. The type/language of code is determined by the Subfield selection in the Field Setup dialog box. The code editor uses line numbering and syntax coloring based on the Scintilla (c) project.

(*) - The maximum number of bytes refers to the UTF-8 string representation. In practice, for users using Latin characters this value equals the number of characters; however, for example, characters in far-eastern languages require a few-byte UTF-8 sequence, hence the character limitation will be smaller.