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AstroDatabank-Type Research with AstrolDeluxe Platinum
This tutorial into the research module that comes with AstrolDeluxe Platinum will introduce you to how version 9.6 added AstroDatabank-type OR searches.
Astrological researchers who wanted to combine charts in OR searches have in the past used Lois Rodden's AstroDatabank program. Astrologers were lucky to have this program. I was present at the 1996 ISAR conference in Chicago and witnessed from my booth next to Lois Rodden's booth her initial meeting with computer database entrepreneur Mark McDonough. Lois provided the data and Mark provided the PC database search technology. The AstroDatabank resulted from their collaboration. I contributed a copy of Astrology for Windows to the AstroDatabank CD as a companion program for viewing charts. However, Lois died in 2003 and Mark sold his interest in their company in 2005. The last version of AstroDatabank, version 4, dates back to 2006, making it compatible with Windows XP, but not with newer versions of Windows. One can no longer buy the AstroDatabank CD. The data found a home with Alois Treindl at the astro.com web site, where it continues to be improved and expanded by volunteers, but Mark's search engine never became part of the web site.
Since the 1992 inception of AstrolDeluxe for Windows, customers could purchase a companion file of 2000 Famous Charts. Regarding the AstrolDeluxe chart search function that customers could use to research either these celebrity charts or their own charts, American Astrology magazine said, "The searches are fast, unbelievably easy to perform, and very effective. This is a very well-designed feature." We can thank the AstrolDeluxe for Windows co-author, Robert Brown, for the research module's excellent design. It automatically combines searches in an AND manner, because each subsequent search is of the results of the previous search. If you don't like the results of a search, there is an Undo button to automatically return to the previous search results. The higher-priced AstrolDeluxe Platinum program automatically installs an up-to-date file of 5500 Famous Charts.
To give an example of the new OR search, you could say that you wanted to see all the charts that have Mars on the Midheaven, OR that have Mars on the Ascendant, OR that have Mars conjunct the Sun, OR that have the chart ruling planet conjunct Mars. A multi-valent OR search like this gives you many more results than you could get searching for just one factor. You could do this kind of search with the database-oriented AstroDatabank program, but not with AstrolDeluxe until now. You turn on OR searches by clicking the checkbox near the top that says Direct search to OR page. Or you can tab to it and press the spacebar. Then when you perform one of the 26 available searches, instead of immediately changing the found records to reflect the search results, the search is added to a Page of OR Searches that pops up at the bottom of the screen. The Page of OR Searches consists of a listbox with all the searches that you want to OR together.
We will start the tutorial on using Research Charts by showing an easy way to narrow the charts down to just those that have known birth times. The search below works because of the checkbox Omit charts with Unknown Birth Times.
The next search shows how to control the birth time period from which you want your charts to derive, by using the search By Birthday that is on the Search Two tab.
You can double-click on any name in the list to view a chart's details at the Chart Information screen, and when finished return to your search results.
One of the many choices at the search By Text lets you specify the desired Rodden Rating Class, where AA means that the time of birth derives from a birth certificate or birth record seen by the astrologer. We only added a field for the Rating Class later in the life of AstrolDeluxe for Windows, so the first 2000 or so Famous Charts were not entered with a rating, but even then it was our practice to click Unknown for an uncertain birth time.
If you click up on Group Signature and select Planet Strengths you will get a planet strengths bar graph for the current chart results, similar to the below, and it will tell you what searches have been done on the charts up to this point, to get this group. I have already noted that "strong Pluto youngsters know at an early age what they want to do with their life."
At the bottom of the Page of OR Searches you see buttons that let you Delete a Selected Search or Combine OR Searches into Results List. There is also a checkbox "Have Combine also print a summary of the search to the current printer". The Combine button will combine all of your separate searches, eliminate the duplicates, show the found results, and make the Page of OR Searches go away. If the print checkbox is checked, then before the form closes it will print to the current printer the chart file's starting count and ending count with all of the OR searches that were listed at the page. It can be very helpful to have the starting and ending count when you are trying to determine significance. If you want to retain these results without wasting paper, make your PDF printer driver the current printer so that you will be prompted to enter the pdf file name. You can use this feature to automatically record the starting count and ending count of a search even when you are doing just a single search.
At Search Two, By Aspect, there is now a checkbox that says "Multi select aspects". When this is checked, the combo box that lets you select a single aspect or to type in the value of any angle changes to a listbox that accepts multiple selections. For example, you can say that you want all the charts that have Sun conjunct Moon, Sun trine Moon, and Sun sextile Moon - this is an aspect search shortcut so that you do not have to tediously select each aspect as a separate OR search. In the example above, we wanted to use a separate orb for declination parallels than we used for zodiacal aspects, so we used the new Page of OR Searches to combine separate searches. The results that met our criteria appear below.
Version 9.6.2 added an Exclude checkbox to Search Two, By Aspects. With this box checked, the names that remain in the list will be all the charts that do NOT HAVE the searched for aspect(s), so it is equal to AstroDatabank adding a NOT in front of a search.
Order or upgrade to AstrolDeluxe Platinum 9.6 here.
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Last modified on August 16, 2017.
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