Database tool for dummies

An Irvine, California-based development company today unveiled its new product called easyBase, yet another easy-to-use development tool for building custom business applications.

Dubbing the product "a document manager for dummies," easyBase is courting small business people with few programming skills and lots of enthusiasm for writing their own customized database software and other business applications.

The tools have a graphical interface that lets users design software with drag and drop icons to set up applications that link to company databases filled with information such as invoices, inventory levels, customer, and sales information. Additional databases can be linked to the system dynamically without preplanning or defining structural links.

The product includes the following application templates: Contact Manager, Order Entry, Invoices, Customers, Inventory, Suppliers, Purchase Orders, Price Quotes, Sales People, and Project Management.

A trial version of the product is now available for download from the company's Web site and will be commercially available later this quarter. It costs $299.

The tool works with PCs with at least a 386 processor, version 3.1 or higher of the Microsoft Windows operating system, 8MB of RAM, and 18MB of free disk space.