A database table is an entity that holds a certain amount of information divided in records; e.g. a phonebook table is a table holding names and telephone numbers.
MaxBase can open, create, modify, delete database tables and their contents; in this section you will learn how to operate with tables. If you want to know how to handle records, jump to the records section.
Before working on a table, you need to create one. From within the main MaxBase interface you can only create tables on your machine -- if you want to create a table on a remote machine, please refer to the NetAdmin section.
Creating a table is actually a straightforward task: just choose the "File/New" menu item, and you will be prompted for a file name. After having chosen where to save your table on disk, a GUI based table structure customizer will pop up. (See fig.)
The panel is divided in three parts: the upper space contains information about field properties (length, name and indexing) and field visual properties (visible?, and alignment). The visual properties can be modified on-the-fly and will be activated all at once when you press "ok", while physical changes to the field properties have to be confirmed using the "add field", "modify field" and "delete field" on the right part of the panel, and will be activated as soon as you press those buttons.
Note that you can re-enter this panel by choosing "Modify/DB Structure" on the main menu anytime you´re logged into a database table. This is the tool used to modify database tables structure.
Finally, if you want to delete a database table, just log into the table and choose the "File/Delete this db" menu item. You will be asked to confirm deletion of the table before actually deleting it. |