iData Pro Review Random Notes Meet Spreadsheet Tables Eric Grevstad
Mon 8/5/02 -- The most popular database among Windows users is Microsoft Excel. That says something good about Excel, but does it say something bad about us -- that we're too dumb to know the difference between a spreadsheet and a database?
Well, maybe it says something bad about software vendors -- that most consumers don't see a choice between keeping employee, product, contact, or CD-collection lists in spreadsheet form (or worse, on paper or Post-It notes) and grappling with an industrial-strength, application developer- or SQL Server-oriented, enterprise database like Microsoft Access. Freethinkers know that FileMaker Pro matches the relational-database muscle of Access in far friendlier form, but even that program is too potent (and at $299, too pricey) for simple database work.
Doesn't anybody still make a humble, flat-file database that offers fast searches and friendly, Rolodex-style one-record-at-a-time views as well as spreadsheet-style list or table views -- and while we're asking, that doesn't oblige you to spend a lot of time preplanning field types and lengths when you just want to jot down some free-form information?
That's the goal of iData Pro, a new Windows program from mostly-Macintosh software house Casady & Greene. Based on a Mac data organizer called InfoGenie, the $40 iData Pro tries to combine real database searching, sorting, and printing power with the scribbled convenience of sticky notes. It succeeds, at least as far as free-form data management goes, but a fussy Mac- rather than Windows-like interface reduces its intuitive appeal.
Have It Your Way
An above-average, 170-page Adobe Acrobat manual is included in the program download, but not installed or linked during setup, perhaps because iData Pro isn't supposed to need much documentation: Basically, the program shows a Mac OS X-style icon toolbar above a "find box" or search line, with a space below that to display database records (like cards in a recipe box or notes in a stack). Each free-form text record can hold up to 2.1 million characters, so feel free to type lots of notes about your phone calls with Jane Doe or paste in a whole document.
Clicking on icons lets you delete the current or add a new record; move to the next, previous, first, or last records in a datafile; insert a time and date stamp or the URL and title of the page now open in your Web browser; dial a phone number after highlighting it with the mouse; or print an envelope or label. The latter choice works if your records are consistently laid out with a contact name and address at the top (or starting on the fifth line, or wherever else you tell iData Pro to look); the program offers ample choice of popular envelope and label sizes and lets you edit templates to place addresses or add a return address or logo as you like.
Need to find your notes on Jane Doe's calls or the liner notes of your Celine Dion CD? Type some search text into the "find box," and the record or records containing it appear virtually instantly.
If you'd like a little more structure than the strictly free-form approach, you can create datafiles that have fields -- such as name, address, and phone number or part number, description, and price -- and toggle between viewing these in a single-record view (with field names at the left) or spreadsheet-style list view. The latter lets you sort columns in ascending or descending text or numeric order and adjust column widths to make data or titles fit.
You can define fields on the fly, not pausing to designate them as text or numeric or date fields. Searching is just as simple, and iData Pro earns points for making it a cinch to rename or add fields later -- and for maintaining free-form flexibility with the last field of each record, which automatically allows multiple lines or carriage returns so you can add text as you like (you use the Tab key to move between the other fields).
Keep One Hand on the Mouse
The choice of (minimally) structured and free-form data management is a winner, and the $40 price is right for anyone longing for a modern equivalent to the old Windows 3.1 Cardfile. But we have to say iData Pro frustrated us as often as it pleased us -- printing, for instance, turned up the old ampersand bug of rendering "A&P Grocers" as "AP Grocers."
In the find box, you can type "AND" (or click an icon to do so) to search for records containing both Doe and Dion, but the program's Boolean logic stops there -- you can't perform OR or NOT searches. There's no way to add formatted or highlighted text within a record, though you can apply a font or typestyle to all the text in each record. While typing or editing text, we foolishly kept pressing Ctrl and the left or right arrow keys to try moving the cursor one word at a time, but in iData Pro those keystrokes jump to the next or previous record.
Keyboard navigation, in fact, is often counterproductive -- you'll never guess it takes Ctrl-Alt-Tab to move the cursor between the find box and data area, and knowing when to press Tab and Enter to navigate through fields and records in list view takes practice. While you can drag and drop text or drag to adjust column width, you can't right-click columns as you can in Excel (or right-click anything; the program is so Mac-centric it refers to the help key as Ctrl-question mark, though F1 works as well).
iData Pro adds some useful bulk envelope- or label-printing to the basic idea of a note-jotting or text-searching personal information manager, but it's nowhere near as capable as our favorite random PIM, Micro Logic's Info Select 6, or the business-class combination of field- and free-form database management found in AskSam. If you balk at those programs' $150 price tags, the shareware Black Hole Organizer lets you stash and search notes (with formatting and highlighting) for just $25. We rate all three above iData Pro.
