Palm ZLib Database Viewer (pzdbView)

What is pzdbView?

Palm ZLib DB Viewer (pzdbView) is a PalmOS application for PalmOS 3.5 or higher. It can be used to view (and search in) CSV-like databases which are stored in compressed form on your Palm Storage Memory.

The whole application requires a bit less than 12K of storage memory, excluding databases, of course. On most Palm devices you will as well need SysZLib (which will need about 30 K extra space). Most users will already have it (for ebook readers, for example); if not, 42K of storage are still far less than any other database viewer I know needs.

Since all data are decompressed on the fly (and the decompressed form is not stored anywhere), searching is quite slow (because it has to transparently decompress the whole database every time). A full text search on a database of Germany's calling codes takes about 8 seconds on a Palm Vx. On the other hand, if you have larger databases you rarely need (but sometimes you need them), trading storage RAM (pzdb databases need about 20% of the space an equivalent Pilot-DB database needs) for search time is an acceptable compromise.

The UI does not have many features; searching, scrolling, and selecting/deleting databases is everything you get. If you need to beam databases, you can use a file manager like FileZ; so pzdbView does not have its own "beam" function.

The database format is quite straightforward to implement; there is a Java based converter (pzdbCreate) for converting CSV to pzdb available as well.

What will pzdbView (most likely) never support?

• Editing of records
• Hires support
• Sorting
• Indices to speed up search (they need space!)
• Databases with more than 8 (visible) columns

Sister project

If you want to have your favourite dictionary on the Palm, look at PalmOpenDic.

Sourceforge project page

Versions

Since pzdbView grew slightly from Version 0.1 to 1.0, and I told that it will always be smaller than 12K, I decided to provide three different precompiled versions. All these versions are bundled in one download archive, but you can decide which one to upload onto you Palm device.

• Lite version (12KB): Contains only those features that have already been present in Version 0.1. All Bugfixes and UI improvements are not removed, of course. No expansion memory is supported.
• Full version (21KB): Contains all extra features like database format extensions, colorful application icons and expansion memory support. Databases must be stored in the database path (configurable in the application preferences). Its default value is /PALM/Launcher.
• Normal version (15KB): This is my personal choice. I will add all features I might use myself on my Palm Vx device. So, this version will not contain expansion memory support (as my Palm does not have an expansion slot) and no colored icons either. Database format extensions are present.

Downloads

If you use a device with PalmOS 5.0 or higher, you can speed up database searches dramatically if you use the ARM optimized version of SysZlib instead of the 68k version. Both are shipped with pzdbview.

pzdbView and pzdbCreate 1.0 (101 KB)

Source code (77 KB)

Some databases

Get involved

Since version 0.2, prc-tools are used to compile pzdbView. So you do not need any PalmOS Developer Suite. It is, however, still possible to use it; everything except the Resource Editor still works fine.

Patches are always welcome (especially those that speed up the program without causing any other overhead); if you add special features that increase the file size significantly (or that slow down the program significantly), please #ifdef them so that it is still possible to get a version without them.

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