  A basic problem of interest in connection with the study of Schauder frames
in Banach spaces is that of characterizing those Schauder frames which can
essentially be regarded as Schauder bases. In this paper, we give a solution to
this problem using the notion of the minimal-associated sequence spaces and the
minimal-associated reconstruction operators for Schauder frames. We prove that
a Schauder frame is a near-Schauder basis if and only if the kernel of the
minimal-associated reconstruction operator contains no copy of $c_0$. In
particular, a Schauder frame of a Banach space with no copy of $c_0$ is a
near-Schauder basis if and only if the minimal-associated sequence space
contains no copy of $c_0$. In these cases, the minimal-associated
reconstruction operator has a finite dimensional kernel and the dimension of
the kernel is exactly the excess of the near-Schauder basis. Using these
results, we make related applications on Besselian frames and near-Riesz bases.
