To start dbWave, hit the icon (or the menu "dbWave" in the menu list).

When you first launch dbWave (click the icon on your Desktop), you will see a bare bone window, with a menu and an bar of icons.

In order to start any operation, you'll have to either open an existing document, or to create a new one.

dbWave is dealing with two types of documents:

1.  database documents (user_000.mdb). These documents are "Access" type databases, ie they can be opened and edited under MS Access (old versions until 2007). The database contains a primary table listing a series of (electrophysiology) recordings, associated to a series of descriptors such as animal, sensillum, stimulus, concentration of the stimulus, date, etc.
2. Electrophysiology data files (xxxx.dat and xxx.spk). These are raw data acquisition document files which have a proprietary format (dbWave) but a few other formats can be read or exported.

To start from scratch, create a new database (for ex by clicking the white page icon on the left):

If you select "Database", you will see this:

1. the left panel describes and list database fields which can be filtered and edited
2. the upper panel describes information pertaining to the the currently selected data file
3. the central panel shows the content of each data file (or of each spike file as dbwave is designed to acquire data and extract/sort action potentials)
4. The upper bar with icons allows you to browse through the database, record by record
5. The "menu/icons" bar just below is meant to look at the same record under different ways: data only, spike detection, spike browsing, spike sorting with amplitudes, spike sorting with templates, display PSTH and temporal aspects of the spike firing, and "Record". This last button is the most important one if you do experiments, in that it will allow you to record data files, by interfacing dbWave with "Data Translation" cards, running OpenDTLayer.