Good question!  Binary files are everywhere, on every computer, regardless of purpose, manufacturer, operating system, or applications installed.  Anyone who wants to do something to a binary file, or at the very least, understand what is inside a binary file, is a potential user.

Binary files have many uses.  There are word processing files, text files, image files, music files, sound files, database files, spreadsheet files, executable files, game files, communications transmission formats...you get the idea.  There are also several proprietary file formats that your company might use currently or might want to develop.  There are a lot of stakeholders in seeing that all these files, when put together, work as expected.  And there is no better way to ensure that this happens than to identify, explore, and enhance--all things BARfly is designed to do.

Specifically, you, the prospective user, could belong to one of the following groups of people:

• Software Developers:  People wanting to write code to support and maintain particular file formats
• Software Architects:  People wanting to design structural elements to a software application
• Software Testers:  People wanting to examine the contents of generated files or memory content
• Security Auditors:  People wanting to study a company's ability to keep data secure from hackers and crackers
• Database Administrators:  People wanting to detect flaws and inefficiencies in a database, as well as develop solutions
• System Troubleshooters:  People wanting to audit, diagnose, and fix files (tasks that were expensive or impossible before BARfly)
• Network Administrators:  People wanting to examine traffic over a network in a schema-oriented fashion
• System Administrators:  People wanting to do a number of the things listed above
• Cryptographers and Cryptanalysts:  People trying to design and crack encrypted formats
• Casual Validators:  Analysts that wants to check a file for consistency
• Data Entry Specialists:  Individuals that must perform high-throughput data entry and format conversions
• Very Curious People:  Individuals wanting to find out what all that weird unreadable stuff on their hard drive is

You might not need to use all of BARfly's capabilities.  There are three builds of BARfly, which have capabilities reflecting the needs of the user:

• BARfly Bronze:  Contains only viewing capability.  You can view files, but you cannot edit them.  Nor can you develop your own BAR implementation files.
• BARfly Silver:  Contains viewing and editing capability.  You can view files, edit them, and save them.  You cannot develop your own BAR implementation files.
• BARfly Gold:  Contains viewing and editing capability, plus the ability to develop BAR implementation files.  This build comes with an integrated compiler, BARCC, that allows a user unlimited ability to create, edit, test, and use customized schemas.

Analysts, auditors, testers, and curious people probably want BARfly Bronze, since they generally don't need to edit content.

Administrators, troubleshooters, data entry specialists, cryptographers, and cryptanalysts can make good use of BARfly Silver.  The ability to edit yields significant power.

Software architects and software developers will want BARfly Gold.  These individuals require nothing if not the ability to create.

If you aren't satisfied with your current build, you can always upgrade.

  See also:  [What is BARfly?] [What is BAR?]