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# Intermagnet CD Data Viewer Help

# Databases

The program retrieves its data from databases. An Intermagnet CD-ROM or DVD is one example of a database. Another example is a sub-directory on a hard disk that holds data in the same structure as an Intermagnet CD-ROM or DVD.

One problem with the Intermagnet CD-ROM is that (since the year 2000) there is too much data to fit on a single CD. One year of data is now split across two CDs. The Intermagnet CD Data Viewer software offers you several solutions to this:

- You can install multiple CD-ROM readers and read from more than one CD at a time.
- You can copy the individual CDs and DVDs to separate directories on your hard disk and tell the program to use these directories to find data.
- You can merge multiple CD-ROMs and DVDs into a single directory on your hard disk by using the program to copy or move the CD data files (see below for details). You can then use data copied to the new directory as a data source for the program.
- You can mix and match from any of these solutions.

The program offers you help both to find databases and to create new ones from a CD-ROM or DVD. You can also create databases simply by copying the contents of a CD-ROM or DVD to a directory on your hard drive.

## Working with databases

All database work is done in the Explorer window. Open the Explorer window by selecting 'Explorer Window' from the View menu on the main window.

### Copying a database

You can copy either an entire database or a single year directory. In the explorer window click the right mouse button over either a database (lowest level in the Explorer tree) or a year directory. A pop-up menu appears. Select the 'Copy' option. A file selection dialog appears. Enter a directory where the data will be copied.

### Moving a database

You can move either an entire database or a single year directory. In the explorer window click the right mouse button over either a database (lowest level in the Explorer tree) or a year directory. A pop-up menu appears. Select the 'Move' option. A file selection dialog appears. Enter a directory where the data will be copied. When the copy completes correctly, the original data is deleted.

### Deleting a database

You can delete either an entire database or a single year directory. In the explorer window click the right mouse button over either a database (lowest level in the Explorer tree) or a year directory. A pop-up confirmation dialog appears. If you select 'Yes' the database will be deleted (provided it is on a medium that supports deletion - data cannot be deleted from CD-ROMs or DVDs).

## What is a database

The program considers any directory to be a database if both the following conditions are true:

1. It contains one or more year directories with names of the form MAGyyyy where yyyy is the year for the data.
2. Each year directory holds at least two sub-directories - CTRY_INF and yyyyMAPS. The two sub-directories do not need to contain any files.

You can easily create a database by hand - simply create the directory structure described above, then fill them with the appropriate data files. You can find out more about the structure needed in the Intermagnet Technical Manual. If your computer is connected to the INTERNET and your web browser is able to read PDF documents, you can access the technical manual from the Help menu of this program.

If you edit the contents of a database, you must tell the program to reload the database. See Reload Data for details.

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