SmartItems is a software suite for collectors, also known as collection organizer. It can be also treated as inventory management tool for home use. The package already 'knows' how to organize videos, books, stamps, photos, CDs, DVDs, culinary recipes. But you can make sure that after simple customization it can serve as secure storage for your passwords, and that it makes management of user-added fields as flexible as that of the build-in fields. SmartItems is intended to be your single universal organizer for any purpose.

Detailed Description

The key program concept is a notion of fully customizable classes (types) of items. One can use predefined object types, like CD, DVD, book, stamp, photo. But at the same time he is free to change these types or add new one. When creating new item types, the user can select from the set of predefined field types, including: edit, memo, selection box, list box, tree, check box, image and HTML. Combining these fields the user can create his own object type, which will fully satisfy his personal requirements. It is important, that the program will provide for the customized items absolutely the same functionalities, as for the build-in ones. That is, it will be possible to search, filter, catalogue, print or export new items. Also, there will be no problems with giving the customized database to a friend, who will be able to view and search it using free viewers. Viewers for Windows, Palm and WinCE platforms are available. In other words, it is possible to say that the user can create his own database system without any programming.

Full-featured multiplatform viewers are some of the program benefits. Other similar software products usually just allow exporting data into some file that can be viewed on PDA. However, usually this file looks like a spreadsheet table with the database structure and some data omitted, and searching and filtering capabilities are usually absent. But all SmartItems viewers work exactly with the same database (which should be uploaded to PDA) and provide exactly the same searching/browsing and filtering capabilities. This allows using your PDA to: verify item availability when you plan to purchase a new one; demonstrate your unique and expensive items through PDA instead of taking risks of showing them alive. Availability of free viewers and capability of exporting the database to HTML (you can locate this HTML at your home page) makes the program a great tool for customizing your collection and making its virtual copy public accessible.

The program is not oriented to some specific items. We know that sometimes the program is used to manage a collection of flower seeds, ceramic toys, home hens (by village users) and so on. However, SmartItems contains some import functions, which can capture item information from CDDB (for audio discs), MP3 tags or just folder content (for data CDs). This makes filling of data for those objects easy. But again, import procedures are not oriented to specific class types, they just require one or more specific fields.

Let us summarize the program features mentioned above:

• SmartItems enables creation and management of collections of any items;
• supports unlimited tree-structured physical folders (each folder can contain only one item type, that's why we call them physical);
• supports unlimited tree-structured categories (each item can belong to any number of categories, items with different types can belong to the same categories);
• allows creation of unlimited customizable object types using the following predefined field types: check box (yes/no), edit, combo box, memo, list (table), tree, image, HTML;
• contains full-featured build-in HTML editor, which allows you to create descriptions for your items;
• supports debtors tracking functionality, which allows you to find out which items you have lent;
• contains full-featured and free viewers for Palm, WinCE, Windows;
• supports powerful search and filtering capabilities;
• supports printing and exporting to HTML.

Please note, that the program is intended for personal use, it is not optimized for shared access to a database or extremely large amount of data. And now a few words about the future. Any feedback from users will be appreciated, and we will try to improve the program and make it more functional. Anyway, we promise, that any data created in the current version will be supported by future versions. Having the commercial license, you will get prioritized support and rights for unlimited upgrades for future versions.

SmartItems is a program package for making virtual personal collections of audio\video disks, books, stamps, notes etc. The program package includes the following components:

• SIWin - the main part of the package for collections creating, editing and management;
• SICreator - the program for editing item types;
• SIPalm - the program for collection files viewing on Palm PCs;
• SIce - the program for collection files viewing on WinCE platform;
• SIWinViewer - the program for collection files viewing on Windows platform.

The main idea of this program is creating of a universal system for storing virtual collections of different items with capabilities of viewing and data search on PDAs. It is well known that there are plenty of similar programs, but all of them have considerable disadvantages such as:

• Strict specialization - the program can work with one item class only, for example only with CDs, only with movies etc.
• Absence of integration with PDA - as a rule, data can be exported only in a brief "flat" format, i.e. as a test file or a file of electronic worksheets. For large collections, export of such files troubles PDA data access.
• Strict data structure fixation - in each program only strictly fixed set of attributes is provided. Though the quantity of attributes is very large (about 20 fields for CD), sometimes it is desirable to consider some individual information (disc color, its place in the stand etc.). Usually this cannot be done. At the same time in 80% of cases most of these 20 fields are unnecessary, and perhaps only presence of film or album name would be enough.
• Strict cataloging structure - the program has a predefined fixed number of attributes, which can be given to objects.

In the SmartItems program package a flexible method of collections creation and support is implemented. This method helps to avoid problems mentioned above. On the basis of the program personal database development is possible with the possibility of its import to PDA platforms. The main advantages of the program are maximal small size of both the code and the data, and high speed of work. We should emphasize that the viewer works rather well even on the earliest Palm PCs. On the basis of the database engine a universal model of data description is built. The model provides for special strict rules for grouping elements in folders (groups), second categorization (when elements of different types and from different folders can be united in "virtual" groups), data search rules, work with debtors logic (which determines missing items of the collection and finds out who has borrowed them), exporting (printing and converting to HTML) and data modification. All this gives the universal basis to creation of collections of any items.

Flexibility of the system is determined by the capability of editing and creating user item classes, which is the main feature of the program. Changing/adding item classes is performed in the SICreator program. With its help you can add new item classes or change the existing ones. Each class is presented by a number of fields. For each field you should specify a field type and a class of presentation. We hope that we included all the necessary classes of presentation, such as test field, combo box, tree, list, image, HTML text, plain text, unique ID. And if there are no item classes you need, you can create them by yourself by adding fields which are necessary personally for you. It is important, that later on you can print, view (including view with PDA) and search data of types created by you, just as you can search data of the attached data types. The program has utilities for quick data import (CDDB, MP3 tags, file system), which do not depend on the item class, but only require availability of certain fields in this class. This gives you freedom in choosing additional attributes.

The only payware components are SIWin and SWCreator. That is, you can freely give the collection to your friends for viewing. We hope that SmartItems will become your indispensable and universal assistant in collections managing.