Understanding Databases

The application stores your asset data in an internal software structure called a database. A database holds data in a way that makes it extremely easy to search, sort, organize, and retrieve your data. Additionally, you can create many databases to further organize your data.

You store each organization you create in a database. You can store one or more organizations in one database, or you can create multiple databases for storing multiple organizations. To optimize system processing speed and convenience, determine which number of databases is best for you. Storing all your organizations in one database is convenient because you do all your work in one place, and you can run comprehensive reports for all your organizations. However, distributing your organizations among multiple databases optimizes system processing speed, particularly if you maintain more than about thirty thousand assets.

You can create more than one database in each directory (or file folder) on your computer. The database is a file with a BDB extension. You can give this file any name that conforms to Windows file naming standards. You can assign each database a unique name that you use to reference the database within the application.