PC Magazine, v4(14)

~4 minute read

9 Jul 1985

The Latest on Databases

Cornerstone

Alfred Poor

You have just entered a dark and empty database. Above you there are some commands and a highlighted cursor. Below you are some empty prompts. What is your next move?"

That was the greeting I expected when I first loaded Cornerstone, the first business program from Infocom. This company started with Zork and has since become one of the top producers of interactive fiction games. But in spite of its recreational relatives. Cornerstone is all business — except, of course, for the pin-on button in the box that warns: “Don't panic!”

It is an apt warning. Once you figure out how to open the trick latch on the plastic box it comes in, you find lots of pieces, including a few little pamphlets and three large manuals (averaging 200 pages each). How easy can this database be, if it's packing so much printed material?

The answer is that it can be very easy. Cornerstone is one of the most powerful Category 2 programs around, but it’s not at all difficult to put to work. It is entirely menu driven, and it assembles a command line showing the options that you have selected. You may highlight your menu choices with the arrow keys, type the first few letters, or type the whole command.

The same easy selection method works throughout the program. You can specify a field as being "enumerated," which means that it only accepts values that match a list of acceptable choices; type enough of the choice to make it unique, and the program will enter the rest for you. Cornerstone also understands English; it will calculate the correct date if you type "today," from the system date "yesterday," or even "last Tuesday."

Should you ever get lost, don't panic — press the F1 key for context-sensitive help that appears in a window that opens up in the middle of the screen. Cornerstone uses a similar windowing technique to display options, such as the list of enumerated values that are available for a given field.

Cornerstone lets you create custom screens and report formats. You have quick access to data on the screen and can quickly request sorts and/or selections (selection criteria can be saved for repeated use). The program lets you specify a variety of verification and formatting features for data fields, such as mandatory or unique.

Best of all, you can quickly connect two files through a common field, so that they can share data. This makes it possible to create complex data structures with little effort. You can design tables to perform lookups, and retrieve addresses, prices, or other useful information.

One of the three manuals is a tutorial that consists of interactive disks and exercises that use a sample database to illustrate the program's features. I found that I could get by just fine on the sample database exercises, but some people will appreciate the disk lessons, which show the commands at work in a controlled environment.

Cornerstone is not without drawbacks. With this much power, it would be nice if you could assemble some of those command lines in a file to be executed in a batch. Even Lotus’s 1-2-3 lets you write macros to do this sort of thing. But with Cornerstone you always have to rummage through the menus to get anything done.

The manuals try so hard to be easy to read and use that they are too large. Breaking them into three separate volumes helps, and each of the two reference books has an index covering the contents of both. Still, they suffer from a fair amount of repetition; perhaps they could be organized and written a bit more concise.

But these are small complaints. Infocom throws in two full, ready-to-run applications: Client Tracking and Sales. If you want a program that can handle multiple files but are not ready to tackle a procedural language package (such as KnowledgeMan or dBASE III), Cornerstone should be near the top of your “check-it-out” list. Its combination of power and ease of use make it stand out from the crowd.

This article appeared in
PC Magazine
9 Jul 1985

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