The Global Database
The global database contains information that applies to every customer you have, most notably the global libraries that are referenced by the customer database. Let's take for example, an equipment manufacturer. During the course of an inspection, you come across an electrical panel made by Square D. If your manufacturer library doesn't already have Square D, you can enter it on the spot. This new manufacturer is stored in the global database, so the next time you are conducting an inspection with a different customer database, Square D will now appear in your list of manufacturers. By adding it once, Square D is now available to every customer database.
The global database also contains information about your company such as its name, address, logo, website, email, and so on. Again, because your company information applies to every customer you service, it's stored in the global database.
Other things stored in the global database include the temperature unit you use (Fahrenheit or Celsius), measurement unit (Imperial or Metric), the currently selected report theme, the current value of sequenced fields, and so on.
|
|
By default, the global database is saved as C:\Program Data\Exsero Software\Aspect\Global.gdb. A custom location for the global database can be specified, but the necessity to do this is extremely rare and is most often related to only having access to a limited number of folders on a highly secure computer, or an instance where you want to share a global database between two computers (but never at the same time). You can set the location of the global database in the Settings window. |
Because a customer database references data in the global database and they are two separate files, it is possible that these two databases become separated. For example, if you copy the customer database to another computer with an Aspect installation but don't copy the global database along with it, then any of the global data that the customer database references won't be immediately accessible. To handle cases like this, Aspect caches global data in the customer database. For more information see the help topic on Cached Global Library Items.