powerful tools for the novice and accomplished player alike, to analyse and play chess.
Database tabs
Each database in HIARCS Chess Explorer is opened within a tab.
This means you can have multiple databases open simultaneously without having to manage lots of
windows.
You can move tabs around by simply selecting a tab and dragging and dropping the tab into a new
placement, for example you can drag the notepad-db tab and place it between the MyGames and
TopGames database tabs.
To work on a database simply click on the tab and the database and its display panes will be accessible.
In the above example we have 5 tabs open:
1. MyGames database where I am entering a game
2. The packaged TopGames database where I am examining some games
3. The packaged AnnotatedGames database where I am playing though an annotated game.
4. Playing game tab where I am playing a game against the computer
5. Notepad-db where I have HIARCS analysing a game
As you will find out HIARCS Chess Explorer makes it simple to have multiple databases open at the same
time and this ease and flexibility allows a different approach to analysing and working with databases
compared to single game/database programs.
You can close a database at any time by clicking X next to the name of the database tab or by selecting
the File->Close menu item which will close the database in the current selected active tab.
Please note when opening very large databases it can take some time to load all the games and build the
required views of the data. However once the database is loaded even complex position searches are
performed almost instantly. Equally when you exit a database tab containing a very large database it takes
time to save if changes have been made to that database.
Databases and Filters
In HIARCS Chess Explorer there are up to 3 groups of games which some operations can be applied to:
· Database - all the games in the database
· Filter - only the games in the current search filter
· Current game
Some functions operate on all three groups, while other's handle only the current game or some combination
of game and filter.
When you first open a database the current filter is set to the whole database. When you search for games
the resulting set of games becomes the new filter. In numeric terms the size of the filter is shown on the
status bar in the bottom right hand corner of the window, for example:
This shows you that the Game Explorer is showing 287 out of 34191 games. The current filter contains
those 287 games.
There many ways to search for games that set the games filter you can read more about these in the
Finding games section.
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