Friendly Finder

A sample Friendly Finder screen

Description: Friendly Finder is an MS-DOS utility program that allows users to browse the contents of dBASE format database files in a new and very friendly way. One might describe its operation as interactive error-tolerant query-by-example. The user TABs to select a field and begins to type. As characters are typed, the most similar database records are displayed below the query line. Even highly garbled queries usually find the desired record. The program can be installed as a pop-up (TSR).

Some quotes from the Press following the introduction of Friendly Finder

Background: Friendly finder descended from PBASE, a program written to demonstrate the string matching capabilities of the PF474 VLSI chip. As general purpose processor speeds increased, this chip was no longer necessary for the processing of small database files. Friendly Finder was Proximity's recasting of the PF474 algorithm and ideas into a purely software form. The company also made available a run-time module for dBASE developers and a C library for source code developers (called P2).

The program was the first to illustrate this kind of as-you-type friendly retrieval and won many satisfied users.

An advertisement for Friendly Finder

• See also:
  • The PF474 VLSI Chip
  • String comparator device system circuit and method (patent)
  • A dedicated compartor matches symbol strings fast and intelligently
  • String Comparator - A new tool for speech recognition
  • The application of a pattern matching algorithm to searching medical record text
  • The definition, computation, and application of symbol string similarity functions
  • PF474 Product Data Book
  • Linear and O(n log n) Time Minimum-Cost Matching Algorithms for Quasi-convex Tours
  • The LikeIt Intelligent String Comparison Facility
  • Netrics Corporation: The commercial source of the world's most advanced intelligent data quality solutions -- industrial-strength machine intelligence and learning technology for the international medical information processing industry, and others for whom database quality and robust operation is critical.
  • The LikeIt Intelligent String Comparison Facility (Software)
  • A Bipartite Matching Approach to Approximate String Comparison and Search
  • Solving the Minimum-Cost Matching Problem for Quasi-Convex Tours: An Efficient ANSI C Implementation
  • Quasi-Convex Matching (software)
  • Mulistage Intelligent String Comparison Method (patent pending)
  • Quasiconvex Bipartite Matching (patent pending)
  • About Proximity and Franklin

• My homepage ( Peter N. Yianilos )