Chessbase Cloud Database
Gracia Bradshaw
While providing computer assistance to a Super-GM recently, I was confused by the profusion of CBV files he worked with. The CBV format, just to clarify, is a sort of Zip file of a database so all the files of a base are compressed into one.
You can perfectly well begin adding games to it by hand as you would a normal database: opening a new board, and entering moves, but if you want to add games from another database into this Cloud database, you will need to first open the list of games from the database you want.
Obviously, if you work from more than one computer (ex: desktop and laptop), this will already save you time from constantly moving files around, not to mention ensure each computer is operating with the latest and most up-to-date version of your base and analysis. So how do you share this with someone else, such as a friend, a teacher, a student, or your second (if you are so lucky)? Easy peasy Japanesey.
Below you can choose if they can only open and view the database (check Load) and whether they can also make edits such as adding analysis or games by checking Save. If you both (or more) are editing it, then it will update analysis and data simultaneously.
You can also publish the list and games on the web for public consumption by adding a check in Make Public in Web. This will work exactly like the One-Click publish function and will provide you with a link to share so others know where to find it.
Open the browser of your choice and go to mygames.chessbase.com and log in with your account information. The standard Cloud Database app will open and there you will have all the rich options available, including access to your Cloud Databases created in ChessBase. You can enter new games, create new bases, delete them, analyze and annotate and more.
The Cloud Database feature is as powerful and useful as you can want, and makes sharing and using databases and games on multiple devices so much easier than saving and sending files. And if you have a subscription to ChessBase Account then the possibilities really open up thanks to the integration with the MyGames web app.
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When you have run out of space you can delete databases that you no longer need. Alternatively you can delete games from cloud databases by first marking them as deleted and then using the function "Remove deleted games".
Following on from my article on Backups, one of the more recent innovations made by the good people of ChessBase, is to utilise the "Cloud" for computer chess. Why is this important? In brief, it allows you to access your chess databases and analysis from any internet-connected device in the world.
It can sound complicated, but put simply, "The Cloud" essentially refers to any data that is stored and accessed via the internet, rather than the hard drive of your actual computer. It enables users to access the same files and applications from almost any device, because the computing and storage takes place on a server connected to the internet, instead of locally on the user's device. This is why a user can log into their Instagram account on a new phone after their old phone breaks and still find their old account in place, with all their photos, videos, and conversation history. It works the same way with cloud email providers like Gmail or Microsoft 365, and with cloud storage providers like Dropbox or Google Drive.
One of my favourite cloud features of ChessBase is their Engine Cloud. It is possible to access chess engines that are running on other computers and use them for your own analysis, or you can supply your own engines to be used by other users. We will look at this feature more closely in a future article.
For instance, if I want to copy all the games from one of my databases into the "My Games" cloud database, I just go back to "My Databases" (press the button next to the "Cloud Databases" on the ribbon, or click the "My Databases" folder in the folder window.
I could write a second article just on the MyGamesCloud section itself, but for now, I advise you to play around with the functions and elements of this amazing and powerful resource. It is a veritable goldmine of information and features. All accessible from a simple web browser.
I just recently purchased Chessbase 13. It is useful to gather up all these games in databases, the preparing tools, the cloud databases and learning new openings (Using Big Database 2013 really helps for GM games when learning a new opening) That is all I know on Chessbase. But, I noticed that there are TONS more features on ChessBase. For example, on the screen with all the databases, there are tabs at the top: Home, Report ect.
I have no idea what any of them mean and how to use them. Any ideas on how to use any of these tools: "Opening Reference" "Editorail Annotation" (Really interested in that one) "Collect Openings", "Generate Reportoire" "Repertoire Report with White (and Black)"
There is SOOOOOO much here and I basically know how to use none of them. I am interested in all of them, but the one that really hit me was on Report. They had similar Endgames, structures and moves. So on the "Report" toolbar, is where I want my answers most. Give me answers elsewhere, that is EXCELLENT!
And finally, Cloud. I know basically how to use it, but I saw this guy on youtube about these little coloured boxes you can get with anything, but he never explained how to do it. I would love to know how to do it. Anyways, is there anything big I am missing with Cloud Databases and is there some special things I can do with it? All I do is collect games from there as my openings, I do not use it much.
I would love for you to reply and explain how I use these tools. If you think just expirement them for yourself, I do not know how to use them or I am worried that some of the outer tools will erase some of my coaches and other peoples annotated games and I would not want to lose those.
Most of the things that you are describing, I learned to use in ChessBase 8 twelve years ago. I read a lot of articles by Steve Lopez at the time. If you use Google, you will find that some of these are still available. Or, I could add tutoring in use of ChessBase to my coaching profile. I'm still using 11, but there's only one or two things that are different in13.
ChessBase,
a chess database front and back end developed by Matthias Wllenweber for the Atari ST which led to the foundation of the ChessBase company in 1986 [2] along with Frederic Friedel - the product name eponym of the company. ChessBase 1.0 was first released in January 1987 for the Atari ST running under GEM. Mathias Feist joined ChessBase in the late 80s, and was responsible to port the database and interface from Atari ST into the x86 DOS/Windows world, and further integrated first chess engines into the ChessBase interface, turning this into Fritz in 1991. Subsequent ChessBase versions evolved to a sophisticated multiple purpose GUI for database management, database queries and mining, interactive multimedia and video tutorials, analyzing or playing games and automatic engine tournaments with various native, UCI or WinBoard compliant engines on a single computer, inside a network or cloud, online play via the Playchess chess server, and Web- and desktop publishing of chess related documents.
The ChessBase 12 GUI is based on the fluent design as introduced by Microsoft Office 2007, featuring a ribbon [3], which is a set of toolbars placed on tabs. Beside the ribbon, the main window features various workspace layouts, either tiled by a navigation folder window, a database list view and database game-list and preview window, or game-lists for query results and game windows with board- and tabbed windows for game notation, annotations, references, score sheet, opening book tree, etc., to play, replay or analyze a game.
A chess database is an organized collection of hundreds, thousands, or nowadays even millions of chess games. The proprietary ChessBase format manages those games with indices and classifiers for data mining and fast access. Queries for games can consider a variety of items, such as player names, date of games, ECO code, thematic keys and fragments of positions. PGN is supported as interchange format.
The ChessBase 3 database format (CBF) used two kind of files, data (*.cbf) and indices (*.cbi). The move encoding was based on a deterministic move generator, storing the generation number of a move. Along with ChessBase 6 in 1996, a new format was established, dubbed CBH, which was able to handle nested variations with annotations, multimedia files, and more sophisticated indices. One CBH database consists of more than ten files with various extensions [4], which can be archived inside a single file (*.cbv) format [5]. Apparently, the CBH file format was reverse engineered for interoperability purposes like import into other databases [6].
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