Multiple databases for only you or multiple users
The data of your address book consists of the following components contained
in a working directory:
Core data -- A database file with extension name "FDB" contain essential
part of your address book, including contact names, sections, fields,
relationships and categories as well as almost all settings. The FDB files
may be located outside the working directory if Main.INI is configured
respectively.
External files -- While the data fields can store names of external
resources like web page addresses and file names, the files pointed by the
file names are general stored in local computers or local area network. By
default, file names without file path point to files stored in the Files
directory of the working directory.
Template files -- While the whole design of Open Contact is very flexible
for all users, some users with advanced knowledge of XML/XSL/HTML can modify
some template files used by Open Contacts. Please read
XML
Explained for more details.
The built-in backup function backups the core
database only. If you want to backup all components of your address book, you
may just simply close the program, and copy all files of the working directory to
an external storage.
Sometimes you might want an address book database for all your close
contacts, and the other for business customers only. Or, there might be a few
users sharing the same PC, each of them may want a personal database located in
each personal directory under the "Documents and Settings" directory.
To support multiple databases, technically there can be a lot solutions.
Because Open Contacts supports green mode which does not write things into
Windows registry, we decided to use the Start-in directory as the location of the
data files. The start-in directory is also called working directory. With such
mechanism, Open Contacts can be used in the following scenarios:
- Multiple users (different user accounts) share the same address book in a shareable working
directory
- Multiple users share the same address book in Local Area Network
- The same user have multiple address books through different shortcuts
with different working directory
Please refer to the installation manual for more
details.
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