Dan, As I said in my response above, the distinction that LO is making is "database engine call or manipulate file directly".
If it manipulates files directly it does it with simple, slightly extended, text manipulation. LO has no database functionality itself, for such functions it can only make calls to a database engine (ie another program) when it has anything other than simple single file manipulation to do. DBase (for example) has no engine that LO can call to. "Flat file" databases are those where there is no ability to relate different "tables". In that respect, outside its correct environment, I suppose you could say that dBase files are flat, but that is because of the lack of correct environment rather than any shortcoming in the files themselves. That, I think, points to "flat file" being a misleading term, not only because it's not just to do with the file, but also because, at least in the beginning, many databases didn't store their data in operating-system-recognisable files. So, my suggestion is to remove the term "flat file" and instead refer to calls to a relational database system engine or direct file manipulation. Regards Mark Stanton -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted