Welcome

Welcome to "CanDB", a breweriana database, collection management, and HTML generation application. The intended use of this product is for creating graphical composites, with many different styles of generated HTML pages, such that details can be seen with real pictures, not boring text descriptions. Collectors collect due to the variety of different visuals and colors of the beer related items, not for display of black and white characters...

Some introductory notes about the program:

· Hopefully you find CanDB easy to use, but please take some time to read through the various help topics before you enter any quantity of data.

· All data is grouped under a "project", with 1..N breweries within a project, 1..N items within a brewery, and 1..N variations of a given item. Each project may contain a different Breweriana Type, e.g. Cans, Trays, Coasters, etc. Your first step using CanDB will be to define a project, possibly do some additional configuration, and then start entering details and pictures.

· All data, config, images and generated HTML are stored under a "candb" sub-folder under the folder in which you installed this application. For example, if you installed this program under "C:\CanDB", all input/generated files are contained in a sub-folder named "C:\CanDB\candb". There are no files created outside this directory path, and nothing stored in the Windows Registry. Backup of your data, or uninstall/remove of this program is as simple as copying or removing the "C:\CanDB" contents.

· While there is no licensing or copy protection with this program, CanDB is not in the public domain. Please do not distribute copies of this program. If you feel others may have an interest in obtaining a copy of this application, please have them contact Randall Karasek for a current release. Thank you.

File / folder database - CanDB "projects" folder

There is no complex external or embedded database. All data is stored in simple, clear case text files, and all images are stored in standard JPG format. At any time you can use Windows Explorer or Finder to view data or copy images to other locations (e.g. you want to post an image to a message board or attach to email). There are also CanDB options to export a given project, brewery, and/or item to a selected folder so you can then copy the entire exported folder(s).

Assuming you installed the application in "C:\CanDB", all data is stored under "C:\CanDB\candb\config" or "C:\CanDB\candb\projects".

Deleting data - CanDB "trash" folder

While majority of your usage of CanDB will be adding data with some occasional editing to correct values, there may be cases where you want to delete data. Since it can takes hours and hours to create the data, you don't want any "accidental" delete to remove this hard work. For majority of the program your work is protected two-fold:

1. Pressing the "Delete" button will prompt to confirm you really want to delete the data. You will be required to type the word "delete" at this prompt to confirm the deletion. If you don't type this value or cancel the prompt, the data is NOT removed.

2. Data is never actually removed from disk, just moved to a CanDB trash folder file. Assuming you installed the application in "C:\CanDB", there will be a "C:\CanDb\candb\trash" folder holding directories/files that have been deleted. While there is no mechanism within CanDB to recover from trash, any deleted text or image files can always be recovered using Windows Explorer or Finder.

After moving data to CanDB trash, if you still really want to remove it from disk, there is a File -> Empty Trash dialog which will show the current trash content, and allow you to permanently remove either selected files or the entire trash content.