Rapid File

RapidFile was published by AshtonTate?, the publishers of the DBase database software.

AshtonTate? was known for Dbase3+ which had to be the most user unfriendly database on the market, with the worst interface and terrible management of memory. Yet it sold millions of copies essentially because it had a programming language integrated to the database and you could write your own custom-made programming languages. Here I presume the author meant "custom-made databases" or "custom-made applications" rather than "custom-made programming languages," because DBaseIII+ was a painfully awkward tool for building language parsers. However, using DBaseIII+ to create a new language wasn't impossible, just unreasonable, so I'm adding this comment rather than editing the original.

RapidFile was a non-relational, flat file database written in MMSFORTH, a sub-language of the ForthLanguage designed by MillerMicro of Natick, Massachussets. The lead programmer at AshtonTate? was the late great TomDowling? who was also the lead programmer at MillerMicro.

Each RapidFile database occupied as many characters as it contained (compared to Dbase's database which occupied a fixed amount of memory notwithstanding the number of characters) in CommaDelimited? form which was transformed into columns on startup.

The database was stored in RAM, where operating it would make it much faster than operating it from the hard drive. The maximum number of records is at least 64,000 with a maximum database size of at least 10MB. Rapidfile is capable of using up to 16MB of extended memory in order to keep an entire database in RAM. However if the memory required exceeded the memory available then the software would start swapping data to disk. The swap disk can be chosen by the user by setting environment variables which means that it can be allocated either to a disk for which the user has access rights or to the fastest available disk. Speed of operation reduces if data has to be swapped to disk.

I'd say the 640K ram was sufficient for 99.9% of users' needs.

RapidFile's menu bar presaged Windows' that was to come a few years later: File, Record, Print, etc. You could also choose to have a Lotus database sort of menu.

Rapidfile provides two basic kinds of macro: global ones which apply to all databases and local ones which are stored with an individual database and apply only to that one database. A simple but effective macro editor allows the user to create functions and assign them to key combinations. Global macros can be assigned to keys such as Shift-F3, Ctrl-F7, etc and work with all database files while the local macros can be assigned to keys such as alt-c, ctrl-d, etc.

RapidFile has a utility feature known as snapshots, which allows you to create custom views of specific parts of your databases. It also even came with a small WordProcessor and some people used it as a SpreadSheet as well. The wordprocessing capabilities were adequate when the software was released in 1986 but would most likely be considered hopelessly inadequate for most users in 2005. However since the word processor is built into the database program Rapidfile does provide a mailmerge facility that is both very simple and effective. The resulting merged texts can be printed to a disk file and then imported into a more powerful wordprocessor where a search and replace operation could be used to make the final documents look a lot prettier.

If you know the software well, and if you know what you were doing, you could play around with the macros and the snapshots and create custom applications. Once learned, Rapidfile is extremely fast to use and, beneath its unassuming exterior, it is actually very versatile. The help screens (press F1) generally are helpful.

The most recent release of Rapidfile was version 1.2, released in 1986. After 1986 no further versions of Rapidfile were released and consequently there were never any native versions for either Windows or Linux. However in August 2006 Rapidfile was still alive and well with a faithful userbase and was still a very useful tool for many tasks; indeed, even 20 years after its most recent release, it is possibly still the best available tool for certain tasks. Rapidfile has been operated in the DOS box of Windows95 and Windows98 and in the CMD box of Windows2000 and Windows-XP. It has also been used successfully with the DOSemu emulator under SuSE GNU/Linux 10.0.

DBase 4, RapidFile and the whole AshtonTate? catalogue were sold to Borland whose CEO Philippe Kahn could not stand BillGates and Microsoft (he was one of Bill's fiercest opponents). Dbase4 and RapidFile never made it to a Windows version and they both were dumped by Borland who became Inprise later on.

Created by Unknown, edited by MWS 2006/08/21.

Base 4 DID make it to Windows See Dbase2000, a Windows based XBASE compiler that is alive and kicking at dbase2000.com

RonPerrella, 12/2007

custom applications

That's in fact what I did a few years ago. I created an office application built around Rapid File. The client, a showroom furniture dispatcher, had access to his employees' databases, he could send appropriate letters to employees, manage his work, dispatch the employees to different places. All this without my using a single line of code.... By strictly using macros, snapshots and form letters.

The person for whom I designed the program got to learn it himself kept on looking over my shoulders, he figured what I was doing pretty quickly and he continued its programming without me. :-)

I have used RapidFile since 1991 and it is by far the best and most efficient data base ever. Sure it doesn't have any of the fancy functions of today's programs but it cartainly got the job done quite nicely. It is just a shame that it was dropped and there being no Windows version. I'll let you in on a secret; I still run RapidFile on my XP Professional! It works fine except it wouldn't print on certain custom views.

Maybe someone here can help. I get a "CS:064e IP:0022 OP:ff ff ff ff ff" error window and then the program shuts down. Has anyone encountered this problem? I realize this might not be the appropriate place for such a question and if there is a proper forum for this please point me to it.

Anyway, I just like to express my fondness for RapidFile and I truly have yet to find a program I like better.

Bill - 2005/01/06

To reconfigure Rapidfile use one of the following commands (they all achieve exactly the same thing):

RF C
RF /CFG
RF custom

The configuration screens allow you to alter various defaults and screen colours.

If memory is limited and you don't need the memowriter you can use the command:

RF A

This prevents the memowriter from being loaded thus providing slightly extra memory for records. In general this option is perhaps best not used until absolutely necessary because it is possible to create a database that is slightly too large to load. When such an oversized database is created one can use the "A" option to provide just a little extra memory and this might allow the database to be loaded successfully and then reduced back to a more sensible size.

MWS - 2005/08/14

My Firm is still using RapidFile for compiling accounts, tender schedules, document and drawing records. Wisely or not we have started developing FoxPro apps however that is going to take a long while. Although RF works ok on Win XP Pro I find that the screen displays only about one third of the height. How can I get the forms and reports to display full screen. RF works fine on Win98 but that workstation is rather elderly and living on borrowed time. Does anyone have a solution?

RJW South Africa - 2006/01/10

There is an attempt to revive Rapid File for Windows XP using the TclTk language. See: http://wiki.tcl.tk/16011

MarkBernstein - 2006/9/29

I was one of the programmers for RapidFile, working primarily on UI design and implementation. There's a tiny bit of RapidFile influence in TinderBox, I suppose.

If you have questions about RapidFile internals, I'd be happy to rack my memory. -- MarkBernstein

I still use Rapidfile for fast database functionality, in terms of finding, sorting, selecting - NOTHING beats the good old standby. To get bigger screen use ALT-ENTER and viola full screen! MAH - Cape Town South Africa 2009-03-05

Thanks for the full screen tip. Very much improves the display on a small laptop screen.

The snag with printing the reports is the dotmatrix printer output. I have tried PCL6 print codes with limited success particularly with paging correctly. It would be great to avoid printing reports as a text file then importing that file into a wordprocessor to improve the quality and print speed. Has anyone had any success with this?

RJW Port Elizabeth South Africa [2009-03-06] CategoryDatabase, CategoryOldSoftware, CategorySoftwareTool