Every company has a huge amount of valuable information stored in various files, address books and other records, which, however is usually of a raw and random nature. The Web Servers of business corporations, industrial groups, governmental agencies, universities and information agencies also contain vast amounts of precious data only readable in certain formats, and it takes a lot of time and effort in order for them to become accessible. It's an open secret that the Internet is a treasure trove of information. But the question is how to put it to work for you.
InternetSoft Corporation has recently engineered a whole new class of software applications designed to process and work with just such random information.
The DB Maker is a big novelty because it can process any type of random data regardless of the company's line of business, whether it be stock quotations, messaging, distribution, marketing material, etc.
There is special software that is used to download information from the Internet. Based on user ratings, Website Extractor is one of the best such applications on the market today. This search robot has been shown to outperform virtually all of its rivals. So what are you going to do after this: download every single page manually?
Much time and money is required to manually edit a large amount of files. This is precisely why the DB Maker is such a handy item. This application can save you a lot of time and earn you extra money, two of the most valuable assets for your company.
The software is designed for ease of utilization by the largest possible number of users. You don't have to be a programmer or IT specialist to run it. It's easy to run because it offers the user step by step instructions with clear examples.
Using the DB Maker will help you get a handle on large external information flows and make them an integral part of your mainstream business database. Constantly updating and staying abreast with current information is a critical factor for any business today. The program will become a connecting link between corporate databases and raw, random information.
The DB Maker can be used to perform a number of different functions, including:
Records or fields? Or the difference between databases and a regular text documents.
The key terms for any type of database are "Records" and "Fields". These are the features which set databases apart from all other random information.
The record in a database is a certain piece of information. There can be many records in a database. The entire record consists of a number of separate fields.
Let's use an example to illustrate these ideas.
For instance, you write down the names of your friends in your note book (a paper planner of daily agenda), as follows:
Name: John Telephone 800-1-124-52-23
Name: Mike Telephone 900-1-421-25-33
Thus the Name will be the first field in our database, Telephone the second field, etc. The fields in databases must also be named. So, we will call the first field Name, and the Telephone field800-1-124-52-23 and 900-1-421-25-33.
Name and Telephone are properties for John which will serve as records in our database.
Now let's see what our data look like in terms of a computer database.
Record 1
| Field name | Value | |
| Field 1 | Name | John |
| Field 2 | Telephone | 800-1-124-52-23 |
Record 2
| Field name | Value | |
| Field 1 | Name | Mike |
| Field 2 | Telephone | 900-1-421-25-33 |
Etc.
In this form, our notepad information can be considered to be part of a database.
This information can be illustrated as the following table:
| Name | Telephone | |
| Record 1 | John | 800-1-124-52-23 |
| Record 2 | Mike | 900-1-421-25-33 |
Now the information is structured and can easily be printed out and read as a spreadsheet.
You will need to remember these terms when working with databases as
they are required to make property settings in data processing systems.
Processing files with the DB Maker.
Let's now suppose you have these data stored in various files. The data may be in thousands of similar files which have different structures.
File 1
Company 1
Telephone 800-1-124-52-23
Name: John
Website: www.cnet.com
File 2
Company 2
Name: Mike Address: New York Telephone 900-1-421-25-33
Etc.
In order to make a database out of these files you will need to define the field and record identifiers.
In other words, you need to figure out after which symbol a record or field value begins (in our example the first field value comes after the Name symbol, and the second one after the Telephone symbol, while the record is the sum total of these two values).
If you enter these identifiers into the interface of the program (see example in directory address/address.cnd) it will first find the records (a set of fields), then the necessary fields inside the record.
In addition to this the program offers a number of other useful auxiliary
functions and options.
A summary of major functions and options
The selection menu is on the left-hand side where files to be downloaded are located.
Here you can view the document source before it is processed or customized settings are used to search for data. Use the View as Text key for this.
File masks
This field shows a range of file extensions (types) to be analyzed. For example *.htm
You can enter a sequence of files types separated by a comma, such as *.htm, *.txt.
Record Identifier - defines from which to which symbol in the scanned document a record will be located in a database
Record Identifier Options
1) "Begin" - The Symbol or group of symbols to identify the beginning of a record.
For example, you know that after the symbols "<TR" there should be a record (number of data) in your database, then you can specify as a record identifier the character set like "<TR". Look at the example "bizcard.cnd".
2) "End" - The Symbol to identify the end of a record.
3) "Maximum Record Length" - limits record size in bytes. If you don't want a record to exceed a certain amount of bytes, all you have to do is set an appropriate field limitation value.
4) "Search Inside Records" - You can search an html table inside a record or text delimited file if you have specified a field delimiter. Quite often people encounter a situation on the Internet when data from a website have to be converted into a table for further use. In table form data are easier to sort, quantify and modify in MS Excel format.
When you use "Search Inside Records" the following search options become available:
Find Html Table Number - Allows you to find a table in an Html document to be analyzed. For example, if you know that data are located in the third table of a certain part of a document, then enter 3 as the table number.
Find text delimited data - The program will search for data shown as tables with a certain delimiter. For example
John ; 800-1-124-52-23
Mike ; 900-1-421-25-33
Here the field delimiter is ” ; “
Field Identifier Options
Field Identifier- represents a set of values defining the arrangement
of fields in documents.
For example you know that after the word "mailto:" should be a value
for the email address, then you can specify as a field identifier a character
set like:
" mailto: ". Look at the example "bizcard.cnd".
You can use the following parameters to adjust a data search.
1) Field Name - Enter any name you would like to give to the field.
2) Field Begin - The symbol to identify the beginning of a field. Allows you to define the set of symbols after which the value of the database field will follow.
3) Field End - The Symbol to identify the end of a field. The field value will be located in front of this symbol. In the bizcard.cnd example this parameter is "<".
4) Identifier Number - The identifier number inside one record if there are many identifiers which are the same within a single record.
5) Number of symbols - The number of symbols to extract. It
can be used if there is a large text after the field identifier.
6) Number of words - The number of words to extract. You can enter the number of words which are to be considered the field value after the Field Begin identifier.
7) Number of lines - The number of lines after the Field Begin identifier of the field to be extracted.
8) Line Number - The number of the line after the Field Begin identifier of the field to be analyzed.
9) Unique - If this option is checked the program will search only for unique records. Double click the mouse on this cell to initiate a unique record search. For example, if you want your database to contain only unique emails, use this field option.
Other search options
The program also enables you to search for email address and URL in any given part of a document.
To do this go into Field Begin and choose
^Find@ - to search for email
^FindUrl - to search for URL
or right click the mouse and choose the following options on your local menu
Find E-mail
Find URL
The same way you can assign
a sequential number to an email address or URL
in the document
which is being scanned.
DB Maker will the automatically find the web addresses you have requested in a document based on @ and http:// symbols.
This option is highly convenient when you need to make distribution lists for your partners or customers.
Saving results. Exporting data.
In the registered version you can save the results you have downloaded for subsequent use, for example using electronic tables. To do this, select the appropriate Field Delimiter).
The field delimiter defines the character separating the fields in a text file. By default ";" is used.
Press "Save results" to retain the data which have been selected.
The resulting file will look like this:
Vista; [email protected]; Sergey
Asona; [email protected]; Joe
When you open the file at a later time in MS Excel, make sure you choose the same delimiter you used when the file was created. Data are more manageable in table format. They can be more manageable, and can be more readily quantified and modified.
Data Filter
Before saving data you can delete duplicate records by pressing the Remove Duplicates key or use the filter key to perform filter functions.
In the former case you should show the column numbers in which there
are to be unique values, and in the latter, the list of words which are
exceptions. If these words are included in the assigned fields of the database,
the corresponding records will be deleted from the resulting file. The
filter will remove all the records which contain the symbols which have
been entered. Therefore, if you enter aaaa into the filter, all the records
containing these symbols in the assigned field will be removed.
Find and Replace data
Small changes must frequently be made to databases. For example, you might need to remove quotation marks, special symbols or otherwise modify the fields, for example in the following way:
“Telephone 9235523” -> 9235523 etc.
Here the menu window shows the initial value and the modification requested.
Special features when analyzing html files
Html documents are special text files containing certain special symbols (tags), which enable web browsers to display documents in a standard format.
The DB Maker operates on the source code in such a way that to work with it you need to view the source document, not the way it is displayed in the browser.
This can be done with the key View Source or View Html Source of your Browser, or View as Text in the DB Maker.
You now need to find the information in this text that you would like to analyze. For example, let's say you have found a value in the telephone field and a set of Telephone symbols are located in front of the values. Highlight and copy the Telephone using Ctrl + Ins and then place the field identifier in the Begin field by pressing Shift + Ins.
Table conversion
DB Maker also offers an easy way to work with tables. The number of the table in an Html document or the field delimiter of the table should be shown in the program. Then the DB Maker will create a file which is easy to work with. The program also allows you to delete all duplicate records from your list, perform a comprehensive filtering operation or make replacements in the assigned column.
As you can see, the program can be used in any number of different areas and will be useful both for corporate users and government agencies, as well as anyone else who needs to make systematic use of incoming data flows.
Examples
In order to utilize the program, please perform the following operations:
1) Press "Load project" button (On the top panel)
{bmc top.bmp}
2) Select a subdirectory:
/ADDRESS
/BIZCARD
/CURRENCY
/JOB
/QUOTES
/REUTER
3) Select and open a *.cnd file with parameters of search
4) Press the button "Extract Data"
5) On the bottom panel you will see the result of data search.
6) You can save the results in registered version.
We hope that the program will appear useful to you.
Registration
DB Maker is shareware. The Registration fee is $49,95USD. In order to obtain a completely functional program, you must register it and pay the fee.
ONLINE REGISTRATION via a SECURE SERVER with a credit card.
Simply go to our web page https://www.internet-soft.com/purchase.htm
and follow the easy steps there utilizing our secure server.