Chess Assistant feature - Search for current pawn structure and material

Chess Assistant and Chessbase are both very powerful products, and it feels that the majority of chess players in the recent years have almost completely switched to Chessbase. I also have long ago decided that the convenience of the user interface even in various versions of Chessbase Light is more important than anything else in a chess package because it allows me to focus better on the 3 primary functions that I care most about:

1. Game entry
2. Viewing games
3. Engine analysis (and adding engine’s line to my analysis)

Yes, inability to easily resize the board has just turned me off from my good old copy of Chess Assistant 6, but every once in a while I still load it up, and I must say there are a few things that the Russian-based software company nailed back 10 years ago. For example:

1. Position Tree (integrated into the database)
2. Search

What is so fancy about “Search” in Chess Assistant? It is just more powerful! It

1. Remembers your previous search criteria (up to 10 or so)
2. Allows you to search multiple databases at once
3. Stores search results into datasets, and they are still around when you re-start the application
4. Is fast (again, goes back to positional tree integrated with the database, not stored in a separate lonely .ctg file Chessbase-style)

And here is the kicker, a very neat feature that allows you to better understand and study typical middlegames: “Search for Current pawn structure and material”:

That brings up a scary looking but otherwise very functional window like this:

It is very convenient to choose a database to search in, or multiple databases (something that is a traditional pain in Chessbase):

Searching hugebase then give a set of useful games with Black pawns on a5 and b5, and all 4 minor pieces still on the board:

It then remembers the dataset for future sessions

 

Sometimes it just feels that software makers don’t want to look at each other’s products! So 10 years later, some features are still better in one package, and resizing the board window is still problematic in its competitor. Or is it just that some things don’t fit into your original design, leaving you permanently screwed?