A method for setting up a customizable client-server system can include custom selecting search data fields from a proposed variety of selectable search data fields in order to create a user interface search mask and/or custom selecting archive fields from a proposed variety of selectable archive fields of an archive database. The method further includes the step of automatically linking the fields selected during custom selection with the respective other one of the two varieties of selectable fields in order to identify and automatically generate a list of corresponding respective fields. This can also include automatically generating an archive index for use in quickly searching the archive database based on the custom selected fields.