5. Rebel Database

5.1. Rebel Database Format

The Rebel database format is published by Schröder BV to help programmers writting tools for handling Rebel database.

Two versions of the Rebel database format description are available:
• Original Description (ASCII text)
• Extended Description (Word 6/95 and Word 97 format)

5.2. Rebel Databases copied from a CD

With Rebel Century you will get a lot of databases on the product CD, not copied to the Rebel directory during installation. If you want to change such databases, you have to copy them (.DAT, .IX1 and .IX2 file - newer databases may also have .IX3 and .IX4 files) from the Rebel CD to your harddisk. By default Rebel Century looks for databases in the directory CENTURY\GAMES, so it is a good idea to copy the databases into this directory.

Before you can uses the databases, delete the readonly flag for the copied files.

In DOS mode you can delete the readonly flag for a Rebel database (with the name database in this example) by typing in:

attrib -r database.*

Under Windows 3/95/98/NT you can delete the readonly flag by starting the File Manager (or Explorer under Win95, Win98 and NT 4) and selecting all files of the Rebel database (i.e. database.dat, database.ix1 and database.ix2 in the above example). The open the menu 'File' and choose the option 'Properties' in the appearing bix deactivate the readonly flag.

5.3. Importing ChessBase Files into a Rebel Database

There exists at least two ways of importing ChessBase files into a Rebel database:

Export to PGN in ChessBase
You can create in ChessBase a new database in PGN format and copy your ChessBase (.CBF) database to this PGN database. Rebel can directly import this PGN file into a Rebel database (option "PGN into database" in menu PGN).
This will also work with the new ChessBase 6/7 version (.CBH files).

Using Rebel's TB.EXE utility
After installing Rebel Century, you will find the utility program TB.EXE in the directory CENTURY\TOBASE. With this utility you can directly import a ChessBase .CBF file into a Rebel database: copy your .CBF and .CBI files into the directory CENTURY\TOBASE, change to this directory and call TB.EXE with two parameters: the ChessBase file name (without extention .CBF) and the Rebel database name (without the extention .DAT).

TB.EXE can't convert the new ChessBase 6/7 .CBH format.

5.4. Joining Rebel Databases

Rebel databases can be joined (append a Rebel database to another one) with the freeware utility program import.exe.

5.5. Rebuilding the Rebel Database Index Files

In case the Rebel database index files (.IX1, .IX2) get corrupted or even lost, you can rebuild the files with the freeware utility rdbindex (ca 21 kB). rdbindex.exe is a DOS program. Call it with option -h to get usage information.

5.6. Marco Aspes' Rebel Database Utilities

Marco Aspes (vaspes@libero.it) wrote a set of Rebel database access utilities (reb_util.zip ca. 66 kb):

REBELSRT

This utility lets you order a Rebel database by any key you want. You can also define secondary keys to use when the primary key is not useful. At the end of the processing, you have a new *.IX1 file ordered according your wishes. The *.IX2 file is not modified.

REBELXTR

This utility lets you extract games from a Rebel database creating a new Rebel database. You can extract the games that match all the patterns you have defined or the games that match at least one of them. You can also extract the games that don't match the patterns.

REBELEPD

This utility lets you convert EPD positions into a new Rebel database.

REBELIST

This utility lets you list a Rebel database using the *.IX1 index file. In this way you have the same order that you find in the menu DAT "Load" option in Rebel.

REBELVW

This utility lets you view the contents of a Rebel database without using any index file.

5.7. How to Search for Black Wins in a Database

Enter the desired player's name in the "blackname=" field and enter score="+".

5.8. Analyzing a Database

The "Analyse database" function is for position databases only (i.e. each game in the database is a position only). If you want to analyse complete games, use the "Analyse Game(s)" function in the database menu "Utilities"

5.9. Fred van Engen's PGN Export Utility

Fred van Engen wrote a DOS based Rebel to PGN database converter. With this utility you can convert the Rebel database files into PGN files.

• REBELPGN Executable (ca. 36 kb)
• REBELPGN Sources (ca. 44 kb)

5.10. Deleting Double Games from Database

Open Rebel's database window by pressing ALT+L, or clicking on the L button and select the function "Remove double games" from the DB-FILES menu. Rebel will now look for double games and delete all the games, marked as double, from the actual database.

Rebel uses the following criteria to delete double games from a database:

1. Exact move list
2. First 2 characters of the white_name must match
3. First 2 characters of the black_name must match

If all 3 checks are true a game is marked as "double" and is removed from the database.

Important Note
To detect doubles the space of the hashtable is used. If there is no more (hashtable) space left you get a message like

    Table over nnnnnn Games
    Press any key....
    Program continues without inserting new games

However the process continues although with less information. If you set Rebel to a hashtable of e.g. 28 Mb then the "remove double games" function can handle databases of 2 million games.

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