For years, Helix's intuitive graphical programming interface has enabled my wife and me to manage all our database needs, most notably a huge collection of data on medieval manuscripts and manuscript paintings for a decade-long project to catalogue all the known manuscripts of the Old French 'Roman de la Rose'. Our collection has complete information on over 300 manuscripts produced from the 13th through the 16th centuries and now in over 100 repositories around the world, with detailed descriptions of each of more than 10,000 paintings and related artifacts in the manuscripts. We have included JPEG pictures for reference right in the Helix database, along with text describing every element of each manuscript and painting. We have also included transcriptions of the pertinent scholarship of the last two centuries so we can quickly see who said what about our manuscripts and give credit (or blame) where due. With Helix on our laptop we can define and run new reports in minutes to resolve questions that come up while we examine additional manuscripts in research libraries or as we prepare scholarly essays and books for publication. When permitted we can take new digital photos in the libraries and add them to the database on the spot, or insert them later from scans of slides furnished by the libraries. With old-style SQL databases this entire project would have been much more difficult and time consuming. The new Helix 5.1 works even better for us than previous versions, with significant improvements in the user interface and reporting speed. Other scholars frequently ask for information from our database and then marvel at how quickly we can respond. Our secret: Macintosh and Helix.