I am looking for an application that allows quick, easy, end user friendly access to a relational database. I need to be able to define forms for data entry and editing and produce reports. It really needs to be cross platform Linux and Windows and not expensive (free). It must be usable by people with very little IT experience. I can set the application up including the forms and reports but I want to be able to transfer it to others.
The database is not important as long as it supports RI, identity columns or something that passes for identity columns and probably triggers. This is a single user system. There should be a version in French and it should not get upset by characters such as é è œ û € ç , etc.
I had a look at openoffice base. It does not rate very highly on my list of user friendly applications.
On 2011-02-10 22:36, vindevienne wrote:
>
> I am looking for an application that allows quick, easy, end user
> friendly access to a relational database. I need to be able to define
I asked a very similar question some months back.
“is Kexi supposed to be able to use an existing mysql database?” in this
subforum, and “What database frontend to use?” in the “looking for” subforum.
Have a look at the answers to both, please. I’m also interested in new
answers here, obviously
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
On 02/10/2011 11:36 PM, chief sealth wrote:
>
> What does Access have that OpenOffice is missing?
simple useability
–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
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“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11
The trouble is that only a minority of people know enough about a database to install and run access or use it. (Besides the extra licensing cost for M$ Office Pro!)
Until there is a need or more users require it, OpenOffice Base doesn’t have either the client side server connectivity (ODBC to M$sql or Oracle servers, say) or power and ease of use that Access has.
Let’s face it, to the normal user, a decent wordprocessor and spreadsheet is all thay want.
Sad but true, but at the end of the day, OOO is free!
>
> The trouble is that only a minority of people know enough about a
> database to install and run access or use it. (Besides the extra
> licensing cost for M$ Office Pro!)
> Until there is a need or more users require it, OpenOffice Base doesn’t
> have either the client side server connectivity (ODBC to M$sql or Oracle
> servers, say) or power and ease of use that Access has.
> Let’s face it, to the normal user, a decent wordprocessor and
> spreadsheet is all thay want.
> Sad but true, but at the end of the day, OOO is free!
I use OO with DB2 - mainly because I’m familar with DB2 - via either ODBC or
JDBC drivers but to the end user at the office, it’s just a spread sheet and
I do pretty much all the SQL side to set up those “pretty” reports. A
couple of the gals are pretty good with spreadsheets but completely in the
dark about actual RMBS database usage. I have to agree that using OO
effectively with databases is not for the faint of heart if you get beyond
the very simple basics.
Besides, the last few releases of OO Base has been really buggy for me -
crashes are the order of the day when trying to set up connections.
There is no simple answer to the original question because Access incorporates many of the features which programs like mysqladmin add to mysql. However, its inbuilt security options are more limited than in mysql and, natively, it uses a non-standard database file system. It can however be used as a front end for an SQL database, whether MSSQL or mysql, though some administration still needs to be done via SQL scripts rather than by using Access.
Kexi is not a direct replacement for Access as it does not have the range of features that Access does.
The other limitation of Access is that does not play well with web interfaces, having been designed before the Internet became widely available. So my long term advice would be to consider moving away from Access to an SQL database and a front end that is equally comfortable with traditional office environments and web interfaces.
> So my long term advice would be to consider moving away from
> Access to an SQL database and a front end that is equally comfortable
> with traditional office environments and web interfaces.
Obviously. But what frontend would you use, that is similar to MS A in
usability? That’s the big problem in Linux.
OO is short of the mark. Many require programing or sql or whatever. MS A
is graphical an intuitive, mostly.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
> On 2011-02-10 22:36, vindevienne wrote:
>>
>> I am looking for an application that allows quick, easy, end user
>> friendly access to a relational database. I need to be able to define
>
>
> I asked a very similar question some months back.
>
Hello.
I had the same problem and is still using a very old version of Paradox for
window 3.11 which works also on window XP, but with no futur.
The only alternative I found with Linux is MYSQL database, through Java and
Netbeans IDE, all available on OPenSuse.
It looks complex, but not so much if I remember my first trials, a long time
ago, with Access and Paradox.
There is a Java class (JTable) in NetBeans which can be used to produce
something like Ooo database in a few minutes (once you know howto), and of
course one can be very creative with Java.
It may sound like a big jump in the unkown, but I started it at 70 and I am
still surviving.
Without having looked at this at all, I’m wondering if anyone has explored how friendly/capable it is to create a RDMS backed application entirely from within OO Calc?
Based on a brief inspection, it’s possible to
Open Calc
View Data Sources
Register (Create or Connect to Existing) an ODF database (looks like ODBC may not be supported)
Perform simple database functions from within Calc (Add, Delete, Modify Columns)
From there, I assume that it might be possible to create an entire application from within Calc using it as the frontend.
I didn’t explore data binding to know how easy and automatic it might or should be. At the very least at this point creating the frontend should be as easy as Access and if data binding is automatic the entire solution might be as easy.
If someone has enough initiative and motivation to explore this path to app creation, would be nice if they post their experience and results.
Agreed. There isn’t anything, partly I think because most Linux development has been in web frontends. When Access came out, it was competing with Approach and Paradox, both intended for office use. At the time the only alternative in Linux was Applix (now departed) which offered a frontend for SQL. Were I thinking of something similar to @vindevienne, I might try writing a Python app from scratch because I cannot think of anything ‘off the shelf.’
I’ve just become aware of a visual web (java) development platform called WaveMaker. Its available as a free studio version (or a paid-for enterprise version). I think web-based GUI’s are the way to go with database front-ends, given the flexibility they provide.
There was a moment in history when assembly coding and the knowledge of it largely disappeared from the world. Before it, the programmers knew and cared about the binary code the CPU saw, even if they relied upon a compiler to build much of it. After that moment, the IDEs came along and did so many things automatically that programmers stopped caring about such things as linking or op codes.
We’re reaching that moment in Web development today, thanks in part to fancy front ends like WaveMaker’s Visual Ajax Studio. In years past, Java programmers would write deployment descriptors, Hibernate configuration files, and endless files filled with XML just to stitch together all of the JSPs and database calls. After WaveMaker, we can almost sit back and forget about firing up vi or Emacs to get a Web application running.
> I’ve just become aware of a visual web (java) development platform
> called ‘WaveMaker’ (http://www.wavemaker.com/). Its available as a free
> studio version (or a paid-for enterprise version). I think web-based
> GUI’s are the way to go with database front-ends, given the flexibility
> they provide.
>
> An interesting (Mac-based) review:
>
> ‘WaveMaker Review | Build Your Own Mac App | Mac Genius’
> (http://macgenius.co/mac/wavemaker-review-build-your-own-mac-app/)
>
>>
>> There was a moment in history when assembly coding and the knowledge of
>> it largely disappeared from the world. Before it, the programmers knew
>> and cared about the binary code the CPU saw, even if they relied upon a
>> compiler to build much of it. After that moment, the IDEs came along and
>> did so many things automatically that programmers stopped caring about
>> such things as linking or op codes.
>>
>> We’re reaching that moment in Web development today, thanks in
>> part to fancy front ends like WaveMaker’s Visual Ajax Studio. In
>> years past, Java programmers would write deployment descriptors,
>> Hibernate configuration files, and endless files filled with XML just to
>> stitch together all of the JSPs and database calls. After WaveMaker, we
>> can almost sit back and forget about firing up vi or Emacs to get a Web
>> application running.
Seems like development programs have been trying to get natural language
translation implemented as long as I’ve been around computers for some
application or the other - and they ain’t there yet. Closest I ever worked
with was IBM’s Visual Age and even that was lost when you got beyond simple
queries - never mind admin functions.
The last real (paying) job I worked on had a need for users to be able to
realize some pretty complex queries against multiple databases scattered
world-wide so they set a group of us to work on specing out a design for a
front end. We got the basic system down - even implemented the code - but
extending it to handle really complicated queries exploded the whole
concept. Just specifying the rule set for SQL was beginning to look like a
retirement plan when the plug on the project was pulled. The solution that
company adopted was to staff each location with what they figured to be
enough SAS programmers to support the rest of the operation - it looked
cheaper. Granted that was a business intelligence operation (back before
“data-mining” and “data warehousing” had been coined) but the thing we
learned early on was that general purpose automation was not a simple task,
especially when you had no control of the scope of the input. If you can
limit the range of the expected operations, there have been several pretty
good frontends but every one I’ve ever tried would fall over at some point.
I’m not campaigning for DBA’s but a clever human is hard to beat.
The objective is to use a sql rdbms as a back end and a simple front end. I normally use IBM’s DB2 as the rdbms but this is probably overkill for this application. I initially tried openoffice with its default database. I set up some tables and relationships without problem. I used the form design wizard to design a simple form to add data across tables. This was all easy. I then tried to use the form to add data. It is far from obvious, after having entered the data into the fields, how to get the data written to the database. It was also very easy to end up duplicating rows of data. In addition, the form demanded that dates were entered in a format other than the display format.
I need something that is simple and easy to use and change. I can write a front end application but finding anybody else who could support it is likely to be a problem. Everyone in the organization are volunteers so there is no question of paid support. A browser based solution is more complicated than writing my own front end. You have to write your web pages which talk to a server side application that you have to write which then talks to your database. It also requires the installation of the web server.
I have not tried Oo calc with a SQL back end but I have doubts about how well it will manage updates and inserts with RI and a one to many relationship.
The current system is based on spreadsheets but the data is inconsistent and duplicated. There is no data validation
