Jon-
I don't think I missed any of your points. There's no real advantage (and several disadvantages) to my shifting from AskSam---any of the information is easily exportable in ASCII format, and if I dropped AskSam I'd be leaving a fast, very flexible full-text search engine for...??
As far as Songwright is concerned, I'm using it simply because I find it convenient. Once again, exporting to MIDI or converting to ABC is not a serious problem.
In any case, unless someone comes up with a single database engine that works equally well on Mac OS 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 etc; and on Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP,XP Pro etc; and on Linux platforms that also meets Max's requiremet of minimum processing time to (pause to take a breath), we'll still be dealing with multiple versions, so it makes no difference what I use.

My personal belief is that many, if not most, of the errors and misattributions in the DT are due to the large number of contributors. Wickifying can only exacerbate the situation. If someone wishes to create such a system, of course, they should feel free to do so...DigiTrad if free for anyone to use as he/she wishes.
    Jim Dixon--The DT, at least in its DOS format, is readily convertible to a text file. Don't know what you'd do with it once you got it, though.( You'd lose all the tunes, for one thing.)

A last (for now) thought. Until the advent of all the new operating systems, and the need for coming out with all the different versions, the DT was upgraded at least every year. Some programming help--primarily aimed at making the generation of all those versions an automatic chore--would permit more frequent upgrades, and much more rapid response to those who point out errors, misattributions or who have additions.