Key Features

• Diagnostic and repair tool:  DTFDOCTR is able to detect and even fix several types of database problems.  It can even repair databases that cause Q&A to abort or give up, even ones that Q&A's recover can't handle.
• Data recovery:   It is also able to extract data from damaged databases, similar to but different from and much better than QEXTRACT.  For example, QEXTRACT often skips several records and it can scramble the fields, but DTFDOCTR gets all the records and keeps the fields straight.
• Undelete:  It can undelete records (provided of course they haven't been overwritten yet or squeezed out by a recover).
• DTF Finder:  This nice feature can search directories to find databases, selecting them based on information such as how many data records they have, the size of the program spec, field names, text on a screen, version of Q&A, and so forth.  For example, you could search several directories to find a Q&A Version 3 database that you've misplaced.  Or if you have a database that you once used to keep track of your favorite country music CDs, you might find it by searching for "country" as text on the screen, or "album" as a field name.  If the file finder returns several hits, you can preview the screen images to decide which database is the one you're looking for.
• Report specs:  DTFDOCTR can "transplant" reports from one database to another database.  It can also extract reports as Q&A macros so that you can "implant" the reports into other databases at a later time or in another location.
• Critical information:  It quickly displays critical information about databases that Q&A is unable to, such as the size of a program spec.  (If it gets too big, the database can be irreparably damaged.)  It also gives you a convenient summary of less critical information about the database, such as the number of records in the database.

In short, DTFDOCTR was designed for all users of Q&A databases. This includes users with database small and large.  And it includes people who don't do any programming in their databases and as well as people who do heavy programming.

DTFDOCTR display.

The screen show below shows three windows open on the database at the same time. The first shows the initial analysis, performed automatically when the DTF file is opened. You can see how many records the database has, how many generations it has, and how much programming space remains. The second window shows the result of checking various specs. None were found to be bad, but if this were a Q&A version 5 database, it would be important to bring the several specs to the current generation if you were going to do a COPY DESIGN ONLY. The third and last window shows the result of checking the data records for problems. No problems were found. (Normally you wouldn't overlap three windows like this. It was done solely to be able to demonstrate three things at once.)