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Creating a New Database

To create a new database, use the File>New menu.

New Empty Database

The simplest way to create a new database is to choose File>New>New Empty Database or just press Command-N. This creates a new database with a single field named A.

Once the new database is created you can manually add the fields you need. See Adding New Fields and Field Properties Panel.

New Database From Template

Panorama can build some of the most common databases for you automatically, including mailing lists, contact databases, checkbooks, inventory, etc. When you choose a template, Panorama creates an empty new database, then displays a dialog with the template. The template contains a list of fields to be created. Here is the template for a mailing list database.

Press the Construct Fields button to actually create the fields. You can also edit the list of fields, like this:

As shown in the example above, you can add tags to customize different fields, like the <money> tag used on the Donation field. To learn more about these tags see the Construct Multiple Fields page.

You can also start with a completely blank template (File>New Database From Template>Custom Template), and just type in the list of fields yourself. This can be a quick way to set up new fields in a hurry. As a bonus, Panorama will automatically set up the necessary attributes for common fields like name, address, amount, etc., including the width, data type, capitalization, etc.

New Database From Text File

To create a new database from a text file, you need to start with a tab or comma delimited text file, as shown below. The first line of the file should contain the field names for the data (see below if your text file doesn’t have this). Note: Panorama X only understands text files with valid extensions like .csv, .tsv, or .txt.

To create a new database from a text file like this, start by choosing File>New>New Database from Text File, then use the selection dialog to locate and choose the file. Then press the New Database button and voila! you’ve got a new database.

If your text file doesn’t have field names on the first line, use the File>New>New Database from Text File (no field names) command. This will import the data with generic field names – A, B, C, etc. You’ll have to set up the field names, widths and other properties yourself, see Field Properties Panel.

New Database From JSON Text File

To create a new database from a JSON file, you of course need to start with text file that contains JSON, like this. The file must contain one or more JSON records, each of which will be imported into an individual Panorama record. (JSON is a data interchange format that is used by many web APIs. See http://www.json.org for more information.)

To create a new database from a JSON file, start by choosing File>New>New Database from JSON File, then use the selection dialog to locate and choose the file, then press the New Database button. Panorama will create the database, set up the fields, and import the data.

Importing JSON Dates — JSON doesn’t have an official way to encode date information, but many applications use this format to store both date and time information.

YYYY-MM-DDTHH-MM-SSZ

When importing, Panorama looks for data in this format. If it finds any data in this format, it automatically imports it as a date. However, it will only do this if the time is midnight (T00-00-00Z), as shown in this example:

Here is the database Panorama creates from this JSON data:

This example illustrates another point — the order of the fields imported from the JSON data is unpredictable. If it is not the order you want, simply drag the column titles into the correct order (see Rearranging Field Order).

Complex JSON Items — In all the examples shown so far the JSON values have been simple fields or numbers. These simple values are straightforward to import into Panorama fields. But JSON values can also be complex values (structures) built up of multiple items. If this type of JSON value is encountered, Panorama will encode the data in a binary field using either a Panorama dictionary or data array. See importjson for more information about this.

New Database From Blueprint

A database blueprint is a special file that contains a complete specification for the structure of a database, including all fields, forms, and procedures. These blueprints are created with the File>Export>Blueprint command. The File>New>New Database from Blueprint command takes a blueprint specification and turns it into an actual database. This new database has all of the structure of the original database, but no data. To learn more, see Database Blueprints.

See Also

History

VersionStatusNotes
10.0NewNew in this version.