Reviewer, 2008-10-13 08:24:00

A tool to extract content from web sites and save them into Text Databases.

Pros: DB Maker is tool that can extract specific content or data from HTML, RSS, XML, TXT based pages and other files, download them and then save them into text-based databases. This ability to be able to create text databases is what gives it the name DB Maker. DB Maker allows you to search a particular file for specific data and receive the results of such a search into an output text file (UNIX users will have used pipes with grep for this purpose in the past). The unstructured output file can then be exported to EXCEL or MailList Express where further processing, and structuring of the data is possible. This enables you to process a lot of raw and frequently updated data from the Web and apply them to their rightful place in a specific text database. DB Maker can also use existing databases of subscribers to process email messages. Data can also be extracted from web forms or in any other standardized format, to be later processed into structured databases.

Cons: The interface is not the best, but this is a minor issue because it really gets the job done. No other limitations seen. Although, it would have been nice if it could carry out all the functions of a standard web-scraping (extracting to XML, for example).

Overall: 4 stars. Works well, and no exceptional limitations to warrant a really negative assessment. However, it could have provided more functionality.