Software Reviews : PARADOX,Version 1.1 Reviewed by John J. Treacy,Wright State University Publisher: ANSA Software,1301 Shoreway,Belmont,CA 94002 (telephone : [phone]) Year of Publication: 1986 Materials: Two program disks,one installation disk,one sample table disk,two keyboard templates,and five manuals ( PARADOX introduction,150 pp.;user's guide,430 pp.;PARADOX application language user's guide: A quick guide to PARADOX for dBASE users,22 pp.;and A quick guide to PARADOX for LOTUS users,18 pp.). Also available upon request is an applications generator guide with three disks that requires a hard disk to run. Price: $695 list Availability: IBM PC,XT,AT,COMPAQ,COMPAQ PLUS,DESKPRO,and 100-percent-compatible personal computers. (I used NCR 41 with 640K RAM,color monitor,808 math coprocessor,one floppy disk [360K],one 20M hard drive,and a 2M Ram disk with IBM DOS 3.1. ~ System Requirements: 512K RAM,two floppy drives or one hard disk and one floppy drive,DOS 2.0 or higher;supports IBM Pro-writer,Epson,Okida A dot-matrix,and HP Laser printers Effectiveness: Good User-Friendliness: Excellent Documentation: Good on program usage,weak on hardware

Abstract

PARADOX is a relatively expensive database-management program that gives good value to those who have a personal computer equipped with a hard disk. It is user-friendly and flexible, as well as quite complete and powerful. It could be a useful tool for researchers who have limited access to a mainframe and command-driven packages such as SPSS and sAS. It will be a boon to people who want to avoid the pain of learning command-driven systems.