This site was originally prepared by the ArgusUsers PowerBuilder Task Force, compiling the notes of Advanced Argus Open Edition training sessions at five institutions from September 1999 to July 2000. It has since been edited by Lija Planthara and Ruth Power to convert the original instructions from PowerBuilder 6 to PowerBuilder 7. Neither this group nor our parent group, Online ArgusUsers Group, are representatives of Questor Systems. These notes are the result of our PowerBuilder impressions from Advanced Argus Open Edition 2a training supplemented with other resources. They are not intended to represent Advanced Argus Open Edition training in any way. Questor was not in any way consulted about or involved in the creation of these notes.

Undoubtedly programmers and engineers will quibble with some of our explanations. We are museum professionals, and not, alas, computer scientists. Our intent is to share how-to information on tasks common to us all. Argus programmers have created a base structure to be built upon by Argus users. These notes focus on modifying existing standard reports to serve our common goals and to reflect our unique identities.

Powerbuilder is the main structural program for Argus. A powerful programming development tool, Argus users are taught to use only one quarter of PowerBuilder's features to create and modify Argus reports. SQL (Structured Query Language), the language used by PowerBuilder to create Argus Open Edition is used to access Argus data. Argus users must deal with SQL when creating and modifying reports, but will learn only enough SQL to accomplish these common tasks.

Argus is a table oriented relational database. Argus data is constructed in SQL tables. The tabs in Argus so familiar to Argus Users are tables in PowerBuilder. Argus is composed of 64 tables linked to each other through table keys. Argus users will be focused largely on three tables, the Object Table, the Activity Table, and the Lexicon Table. Sometimes these tables will need intermediate tables to communicate with each other. Questor's table map illustrates the relationships between your Argus tables and may be viewed through a document resident on the local drive you loaded Argus into. The filename of this document is probably C:\ProgramFiles\Questor\Argus\SQLany\DataModel.pdf. (You'll need an Adobe reader to access the document, but Questor has thoughtfully included one on the same disk or you can download one for free from Adobe Acrobat.)

The fields and superfields on the tabs in Argus are columns in PowerBuilder. Argus records are rows in PowerBuilder. Argus data is retrieved in searches generated by PowerBuilder and displayed (or printed) in reports generated by PowerBuilder. These reports are written on PowerBuilder datawindows. While searches are most easily conducted in Argus itself, reports can be created or modified only in PowerBuilder or Crystal.