Tip, July 1998

Date Searching and DB/TextWorks Backup Procedures

1. Date Searching

DB/TextWorkss® and CS/TextWorks date fields can be searched in many flexible ways, whether for specific individual dates (e.g. 23 Jun 2006, or 10-03-2004) or for date ranges (e.g. Jan 2003:June 2006, or 15 June 2002:30 June 2002).

You can also use some shorthand formats to make range searching even quicker. For example, the search

Jan 2004  will include all dates entered within the month of January 2004.

Jan 2004:Jun 2004   finds all items dated within the first six months of the year. In both these cases the entry Jan 2004 is considered to lie within the month of January, just as if it had been entered with an actual date, such as 23 Jan 2004.

However, here is an odd little quirk: the search

1 Jan 2005:30 June 2005

will not retrieve any dates entered as just January (or Jan) 2005, as these come before 1 Jan 2005 in the index and are therefore excluded by the above search.

So if you use both kinds of date entries and want include all the entries within a month, be sure to use just the month name when searching, not date and month.

You may also wish to read our tip on Controlling Date Formats.

2. Backing Up DB/TextWorks textbase files

Every DB/TextWorks textbase that you create consists of 10 files, all with the same file name and with the extensions listed below:


Extension Description
.TBA Primary textbase definition file; also contains elements stored in the textbase
.ACF Access control file, controls simultaneous access to the textbase by multiple users or software instances
.DBS Textbase structure file, contains field definitions and other information about the structure of the textbase
.IXL Indexed list file, contains the validation and substitution lists
.DBR Contains the records (including deferred new, deleted, or changed records)
.DBO Contains a directory to the records in the .DBR file
.SDO Contains a directory to records with deferred updates in the .DBR file
.BTX Contains the Term and Word indexes for the fields
.OCC Contains the lists of records indexed by the terms and words in the .BTX file
.LOG Textbase log file, lists changes to the textbase structure and records

Back up all of your textbase files after you create or edit the textbase structure, and on a regular basis thereafter. When you back up textbase files, you are also backing up records.You can back up your files using Windows Explorer — be sure to grab all of the files listed above and copy them to a backup folder. Otherwise, you can write a batch file that copies all of the relevant files to a backup folder, then you can create a desktop shortcut to run the batch file. If the name of your textbase is "CATALOG", and it resides on your Q:\LIBRARY folder and is backed up to your C:\BACKUP folder, the batch file would need to read as follows:

    Q:
    cd\library
    copy  catalog.*  c:\backup

Note that the Export and Dump Textbase commands also provide a way of backing up records, as a further level of safety. For more information, see Backing Up Textbases and Other Information in the DB/TextWorks online help.

Content Server Backups

If you are using the Content Server platform rather than the DB/Text® platform, please read our tip on Backing up Content Server textbases.