I wanted to put in my 2 cents. Access is not an RDBMS.. It is a single
user - small user, and frequent fix type system. I have never worked on a
real database system that does not have a command line interface. It seems
fearsome at first, but it's actually easy. SQL Server do doubt has very
nice GUI tools, but having used that DB a bit, [as a user] I am not very
impressed.
>
> I know these are pathetic questions to most of you so please have patience
> with a Windows user...
> what is "shell>"?
> what is the "./"?
> is "mysql_installation_directory" supposed to be replaced with my
> installation dir?
On of the afore mentioned e-mails already answered most of this, but IU
wanted to add some significance about the './' and why you need it and you
DON'T need '.\' on a dos/windows systems.
Any file in a unix environment can be marked executable. That does not mean
it will run but any file can. Unix/Posix shells [you could related cmd.exe,
or command.com to a shell] rely on the PATH variable to tell them where to
run programs from. No Unix has './' [or the local directory] in the path,
because it would present a small security risk when running programs,
especially for the root user. Hence, if you want to run a program from a
specific location that is _not_ in the PATH, you need to type in the
relative, or the full path to the program. In this case, change to the
directory where you find the program, and type:
'./progname'
>
> I realize that I'm going to be in the minority here but I have to say it.
> Open source would go much farther if they had self explanatory GUIs and had
> basic pre-setup apps that were ready for the average user to use. I program
> in Java and I feel the same about the JDK Sun produces. I use JCreator
> because it has an easy to follow GUI interface. Most open source apps I
> have attempted to use have some of the worse documentation around. The
> writers assume so much about the users. OK - call me inept, stupid, or
> whatever but I had to say it.
I don't know what you've been using, but I have used a TON of open source,
and most of it has good documentation. Partly because most opensource
programmers think that you might want to understand the underlying process
that the computer is going through in order to complete your requests, run
the program, etc. Windows silently teaches you something else - using the
pretty eye candy. You are gently brought in and taught one way of thinking
and relating to your computer. But if you could step back and look at the
skills necessary to run a GUI vs. use a command prompt , one is not actually
more complicated than the other. [And you lose a lot of flexibility with a
GUI]. Save one problem, people tend towards visual things, it's natural,
and so they seem to fear CLI more than GUI.
Oh, and on a more personal note, most people who have huge issues with
open-source apps don't completly RTFM. They are impatient, frustrated and
want all this stuff to work in 30 seconds otherwords is MUST be crap.
However, 15 minutes of patient reading will often alleviate those issues. =P.
Hope you get this figured out to your comfort. MySQL may take a little bit
of extra effort to administrate, [esp. at first] but it is vastly superior to
Access, and MUCH MUCH cheaper than SQL Server 7, or whatever. Also, it
boasts one HUGE advantage over SQL server: You are not tied to a single
proprietary platform =).
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