De Bewerking / Peter Heijink wrote:
At the moment i`m using windows XP and MS office, installed is OO 3.2.1 . I
want to share a general experience concerning base ( As addicted database
user I refer from storing information in spreadsheets.)
As far as I can judge the functionality of writer and calc is similar (or
better) then the corresponding MS programms. For base this fells behind
when compared with access. To mention the most annoying points:
1) in combo-lists there is only one column available. With identical names
it is hard to discriminate between members/clients that only differ in
address.
Listbox with SQL expression
SELECT "Surname"||','||"Forname"||"DOB" AS "VISIBLE", "PersonID" AS
"BOUND" FROM "Persons" ORDER BY "VISIBLE"
Bound column = 1 (0 is the visible one)
Writing the ID to the foreign key of your one-to-many relation
2) in forms the relations between the main form and sub form is via fields,
the field in the subform may not be part of an index. However, when
structuring tables and relations the subform field very often naturally
emerges as part of an index.
Where is the problem?
SELECT * FROM "Somewhere", draw some form controls only for the fields
to edit and show, bind the subform any way you need, even invisible
auto-ID fields.
3) it is not possible to import / work with information stored in the CSV
format. (though i have seen a project description for this)
You can make a database from a collection of similar csv files to be
used as a read-only source for all documents and you can utilize the
built-in HSQLDB enginge (or the DB-engine of your choice) to read and
write csv.
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=23727
Are these items correct and not subject to the combination of operating
system and OO-version?
Is my impression right that base is in the tail of development, when
compared to writer, calc, impress, draw?
The incentive of my remarks is that the items 1 and 2 are a major obstacle
for me to abandon MS-office and adopt OO
Now I only switch to OO on an occasional basis, for instance when
information has to be shared with others or when receiving information in a
format not recognized by MS office.
The experience with OO is positive! However, for the time being the
internal bulk of my applications remains unaffected.
Base is NOT a database program. First of all it is a bridge between
tabular data from various source and ODF documents. All forms and
reports are nothing but ODF documents. Once you have a connection to
some external database engine (MySQL and others) you may add some query
definitions (select queries), input forms and reports to your
configuration (the "Base document" is hardly more than a zipped
configuration file).
The database you can create from scratch embeds a whole HSQL database in
the very same zip file (with some negative consequences regarding
safety, stability and performance). After the embedded HSQLDB has been
extracted and OOo's HSQL server has been connected to the extracted DB
you have just a special case of an external database connection.
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