On 15 May 2013 21:44, Tim Brocklehurst <t...@engineering.selfip.org> wrote: > On Wednesday 15 May 2013 20:57:47 Peter Collins wrote: >> Hi Phil >> >> On 15 May 2013 19:13, Philip Stubbs <phi...@stuphi.co.uk> wrote: >> > My question is, what can I use that will be no more complicated >> > than PHP/HTML, will run on Windows /Cygwin, and be available on Linux >> > too? Ideally for my simple database type app, >> >> Also have you thought about LibreOffice Base? that would be cover on >> Windows and Linux. >> >> Rgds >> >> Peter. > > I would seriously consider running a MySQL DB (standalone, no Apache or PHP) > and then front-ending with Access over ODBC or LibreOffice. > > I recently did an Access front-end and it wasn't too bad. I'm not saying it > was a pleasurable experience, but I got through it without gouging my eyes > out. > > LibreOffice Base was similar the last time I used it. It has a few nice > touches > like being able to change the DB Schema from LOB; And of course, it's cross- > platform, so a little less lock-in. > > Both Access and LOB take a bit of learning, but they are both very capable > packages. >
Some time ago, I created an Access Database, with GUI for work, all in Access. It worked OK, was slow and seemed to corrupt data quite often. So, we thought we would move it over to mysql for the backend, and still use the Access GUI. This turned out to be a epic fail, the mysql ODBC drivers (what you need to interface Access GUI to mysql) are buggy as hell, and unworkable in practice. There are all sorts of data types that they fail to convert correctly between access and mysql. All bugs in the mysql ODBC. So, I would strongly recommend NOT to use Access at all, ever, because you will be struggling to move it to something else, if more than one person starts accessing it. Also, when cut and pasting data from Access to Excel and back again, it silently does horrible things like truncate the fields. In the end, I re-implemented it in PHP, Apache and mysql. It is very easy to create simple web forms for input, search and retrieval of the data. I actually cheated, and just took a few of the PHP pages from some existing open source tool like bugzilla, and modified the page layout and behaviour to what I wanted. Now days, you would probably use python instead, and implement a REST interface for Machine to Machine interface for collecting the data from its source. So, don't re-invent the wheel, find an open source tool that does the job say 80% and then just tweek it a bit for your needs. I used bugzilla as a start because it already had all the database access code for input, searches and retrieval. The finished tool I did, with PHP, Apache and mysql is now being accessed by over 200 people from various countries within the same company. Kind Regards James -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------
