What database frontend to use?

English Open Chat
1

Hi,

I have a small database of books, done in MySQQL, and using “rekall” to
access and modify it.

It has several linked tables. There is a main table (books) like:

Table books Table Authors

index --------> index
title / autor name
author-------/

(this is a simplification, there are more tables and fields)

So that when I display the table “books” in rekall I see the titles and the
author names, not the index number. And I can edit any of the fields: if I
click on “author”, I get a drop list where I can choose any of the existing
authors. I want that feature, and I haven’t found it anywhere else (except
in MS-Access).

If I open the same table in OpenOffice, I see the table, but instead of the
authors, I see the numbers of the indexes, it does not link to the author
table. This is useless.

If I create a view where I indicate the links, it just displays the titles
and authors, but I can not edit. WHY!?

I have tried creating a form, but it displays no data, empty. I see nowhere
to edit where it gets it data from, and tell it that the authors names are
in another table and link them.

I can create a form that corresponds to the table “books” and allows
editing - but no authors name, and no way to tell it how. If I try to
create a form to display both books and authors, I only get data from only
one of both tables, the last one I add.

I don’t know how to create a form that allows editing of all the fields,
with the names of authors, not the index numbers.

So I’m tied to use rekall for editing the tables. The problem is that
rekall is KDE3 only, and is almost unmantained (or it would have a kde4
version), so it will disappear eventually.

What other database front ends are there, that work in a visual way (MS
access style)? That is the question.

I have tried “goom” (gnome): it doesn’t start (bugzilled)

I have tried to install “kexi”: it is not in “oss”, thus it is still very
experimental or something is bad about it. Anything not official must be
bad >:-)

I have tried openoffice: insufficient features, no linked tables edit (see
above).

So what else can I use?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

2

Hi,

Are you using KDE desktop? There is a great soft to manage books : Tellico. So, no need to do the job yourself. :wink:

3

On 2010-11-24 04:06, DaaX wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Are you using KDE desktop? There is a great soft to manage books :
> ‘Tellico’ (http://tellico-project.org/). So, no need to do the job
> yourself. :wink:

But the job is already done, and I have my strong views of what I want or
don’t want on the database. I have stored data in that database for years,
I just want a replacement front end for rekall.

That it is a library is just coincidental. The quest for a good database
frontend would serve for any other database.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

4

If you are having problems getting Kexi to do what you want, put in a bug/wish as it is under active development and they may well appreciate informed feedback.

5

On 2010-11-24 10:06, john hudson wrote:
>
> If you are having problems getting Kexi to do what you want, put in a
> bug/wish as it is under active development and they may well appreciate
> informed feedback.

I would, but it is not available in a “standard” KDE repo:

No results found for “druid” in openSUSE_112
cer@Telcontar:~> webpin kexi
… performing request on
http://software.opensuse-community.org/ws/searchservice/Search/Simple/openSUSE_1
36 results (13 packages) found for “kexi” in openSUSE_112

  • koffice2-kexi: Database Application
  • 2.1.81 [KDE:/KDE4:/UNSTABLE:/Desktop | KDE:/KDE4:/Playground]

That repo is listed as risky. I may try to add that repo, but if it tries
to modify much of my plain kde4, that is a no-no.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

6

On 2010-11-24 10:06, john hudson wrote:
>
> If you are having problems getting Kexi to do what you want, put in a
> bug/wish as it is under active development and they may well appreciate
> informed feedback.

I installed it from

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE/UpdatedApps/openSUSE_11.2,

but I can not start it:

Message from server: Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘’
(111)
Server result: 2002

It is trying to use the “default” socket, with an empty name for it (the ‘’
above. I had to tell it to use TCP/IP instead to succeed.

Aparently, it connects to mysql (so says mysql admin), but there are not
tables. It does not see them! If I click on Tables it offers to create a
new table, but it does not display any existing table.

Kexi is useless. :-/

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

7

Are you looking for building forms to insert/interact with the database, or to manage the database itself?

If you are just looking to manage the database, have you tried MySQL Workbench? I’ve also found the database plugins for Netbeans to be pretty good, but may be an overkill if you don’t want it’s primary code developing IDE part.

8

On 2010-11-24 19:06, dragonbite wrote:
>
> Are you looking for building forms to insert/interact with the database,
> or to manage the database itself?
>
> If you are just looking to manage the database, have you tried ‘MySQL
> Workbench’ (http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/)? I’ve also found
> the database plugins for Netbeans to be pretty good, but may be an
> overkill if you don’t want it’s primary code developing IDE part.

I want simply to insert data into the tables, and consult them, in tabular
form (not as forms).

I use linked tables. It is a list of books, showing authors (and more), but
the table “books” stores numbers that point to the table “authors” instead
of having to write their names a hundred times.

But the important thing is that when I display table “books” I see the
titles and names of the authors, not the numbers, directly in the table
view. This is a feature of Rekall that I have not found yet any other front
end that does so: I can have view, but not write.

Other tools, like OpenOffice, display numbers in the author column. That is
useless.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

9

If you just want to debug the database you can write a query with a JOIN in phpMyAdmin’s SQL tab and the results will be presented in table form, and that can be exported.

If you want this for the end user to view, write a PHP program with the JOIN query.

10

On 2010-11-25 00:06, ken yap wrote:
>
> If you just want to debug the database you can write a query with a JOIN
> in phpMyAdmin’s SQL tab and the results will be presented in table form,
> and that can be exported.
>
> If you want this for the end user to view, write a PHP program with the
> JOIN query.

You don’t understand.

I don’t want to do any programming at all. It has to be visual, in the
style of MS Access, but with mysql/postgresql engines behind the scene.

Rekall does it perfectly, but it is not maintained.

Look, I’ll show you you. This is how Rekall shows:

<http://picpaste.com/Screenshot-biblioteca_-_Rekall.png>

I click in the table “libros”, and this shows:

<http://picpaste.com/Screenshot-Table__Biblioteca_Libros_-_Rekall.png>

Notice the drop-list in the column “autor”. That is how I want it.

Now, look at the exact same table as OObase sees it:

<http://picpaste.com/Screenshot-Biblioteca.Libros_-Biblioteca-native-_OpenOffice.org_Base__Table_Data_View.png>

See the difference? The “autor” column shows the numbers that link to the
table “autores”. I want to see the names, and be able to change them, as I
do in Rekall. OO does not allow editing.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

11

Yes, that’s one reason Access is still popular with many people. It allows graphical association of linked tables.

It’s a pity you don’t want to learn SQL. It’s just one JOIN query.

Oh well, can’t help you there. Good luck.

12

On 2010-11-25 04:06, ken yap wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2257470 Wrote:
>> I don’t want to do any programming at all. It has to be visual, in the
>> style of MS Access, but with mysql/postgresql engines behind the scene.
>
> Yes, that’s one reason Access is still popular with many people. It
> allows graphical association of linked tables.
>
> It’s a pity you don’t want to learn SQL. It’s just one JOIN query.

Then what? What do I use to display all of it in tabular form?
What do I use to edit the author of a book in the same table?

I can’t start now to program a full SQL program to display and edit a table!

Somebody must have it done before! This is unbelievable.

When I join tables in OpenOffice (graphically), I can no longer edit. They
become read-only.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

13

If you write the JOIN query in phpMyAdmin, it returns a table. However your point about not being able to edit the author directly from the result is valid. As I said, it’s only good for admins and debugging.

Yes, a replacement for Access is one of the frequent requests of OSS.

14

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15

On 2010-11-25 06:09, Barry Nichols wrote:
> If there isn’t a front-end suitable for this DB you’ve created, I would
> suggest using PHP or Perl to code a simple browser based front-end.
>
> Then it will do EXACTLY what you want.

Which means using a year or two to learn and code it - no thanks. It is far
easier to keep using rekall, even if it means keeping a VM for the purpose.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

16

On 2010-11-25 05:36, ken yap wrote:
>
> If you write the JOIN query in phpMyAdmin, it returns a table. However
> your point about not being able to edit the author directly from the
> result is valid. As I said, it’s only good for admins and debugging.

Well, that is similar to what I get if I do a query in OO, or a table view.
It is only usable for looking at the data…

And without that feature, databases are useless. Just a plain tables, no
linked tables - unless you know how to program and create your own.

> Yes, a replacement for Access is one of the frequent requests of OSS.

Indeed! :-((

Which is what I say, Rekall is a very good database frontend. The problem
is that the company that develops it seems to have lost interest, there is
only a kde3 version. Which works, but will eventually stop working.

I had hoped that kexi would be it, but I can’t even open the existing
database. It finds the database alright, but it doesn’t show any of the
existing tables. There is provision for creating new tables, but not for
showing the existing ones.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

17

So I’m tied to use rekall for editing the tables. The problem is that rekall is KDE3 only, and is almost unmaintained (or it would have a kde4 version), so it will disappear eventually.

As it seems the last available package of rekall was for 11.0. I had a look at the source package and found that it can be compiled as a QT3 only application (independent of KDE). It still needs python 2.5, but I guess that with some tweaking it could be packaged for 11.3. Maybe this would be worth the effort.

18

It does not look too bad. I tried to compile rekall-2.4.6 from source under 11.3. First I had to add a few devel packages from the standard repos, but it succeeded to configure with the command ‘make config.qt3’:

vodoo@myhost:~/packages/rekall/rekall-2.4.6> make config.qt3
PYTHONPATH=scons/ python ./scons/rkScanner.py \
                                                     --make --spec=settings.qt3
Checking for PCRE includes              : /usr/include
Checking for PCRE libraries             : /usr/lib
Enabling (non-KDE) KJS scripting
Checking for QT3 includes               : /usr/lib/qt3/include
Checking for QT3 libraries              : /usr/lib/qt3/lib qt-mt
Checking for QT3 binaries               : /usr/lib/qt3/bin
Checking for CPPUnit includes           : /usr/include
Checking for CPPUnit libraries          : /usr/lib
Checking for CPPUnit QT libraries       : not found (only needed for unit test suite)
Checking for python includes            : /usr/include/python2.6
Checking for python libraries           : /usr/lib
Checking for MySQL includes             : /usr/include/mysql
Checking for MySQL libraries            : /usr/lib
Checking for ODBC includes              : /usr/include
Checking for ODBC libraries             : /usr/lib
Checking for sqlite3 includes           : /usr/include
Checking for sqlite3 libraries          : /usr/lib
Checking for MDB includes               : /usr/include
Checking for MDB libraries              : /usr/lib
Warning    : Cannot locate meinproc - using bundled documentation

Looks good so far. Compilation went ahead quite a bit but then failed with:

vodoo@myhost:~/packages/rekall/rekall-2.4.6> make qt3
...
In file included from db/odbc/kb_odbc.cpp:184:0:
db/srclib/kb_odbcval.cpp: In constructor 'KBODBCValue::KBODBCValue(const KBValue&, QTextCodec*)':
db/srclib/kb_odbcval.cpp:148:52: error: 'malloc' was not declared in this scope
db/srclib/kb_odbcval.cpp: In destructor 'KBODBCValue::~KBODBCValue()':
db/srclib/kb_odbcval.cpp:180:33: error: 'free' was not declared in this scope
db/odbc/kb_odbc.cpp: In member function 'virtual bool NS_KBODBC::KBODBC::doConnect(KBServerInfo*)':
db/odbc/kb_odbc.cpp:580:5: warning: suggest explicit braces to avoid ambiguous 'else'
db/odbc/kb_odbc.cpp: In member function 'virtual bool NS_KBODBC::KBODBC::doListFields(KBTableSpec&)':
db/odbc/kb_odbc.cpp:1233:27: warning: unused variable 'priv'
In file included from db/odbc/kb_odbc.cpp:2275:0:
db/srclib/kb_odbcrow.cpp: In function 'bool fetchRowValues(NS_KBODBC::KBODBC*, QTextCodec*, void*, uint, KBValue*, KBType**, QValueList<short int>&, QValueList<short int>&, KBError&)':
db/srclib/kb_odbcrow.cpp:193:11: error: 'exit' was not declared in this scope
db/odbc/kb_odbc.cpp: At global scope:
db/odbc/kb_odbc.cpp:108:16: warning: 'QString sqlCodeToCode(SQLSMALLINT)' defined but not used
db/odbc/kb_odbc.cpp:154:19: warning: 'SQLINTEGER packBinary(char*, SQLINTEGER)' defined but not used
scons: *** [build/qt3/db/odbc/kb_odbc.os] Error 1
make: *** [qt3] Fehler 2

To me this looks like something which could easily be fixed by someone who has some good knowledge of C++ (unfortunately I never went beyond simple plain C).

19

On 2010-11-25 15:36, vodoo wrote:
>
>> So I’m tied to use rekall for editing the tables. The problem is that
>> rekall is KDE3 only, and is almost unmaintained (or it would have a kde4
>> version), so it will disappear eventually.
>
> As it seems the last available package of rekall was for 11.0.

It is available for 11.2, in the kde3 repo. That’s what I use. But it has
bugs, it crashes, some features no longer work. It still has bugs I
reported years ago.

I wonder… Can OOcalc use a database as data source, and write to it?

Look, in OObase I can create a table view like this:

<http://picpaste.com/Screenshot-Biblioteca-native.odb___View1_-_OpenOffice.org_Base__View_Design.png>

which is “access” style, and results in this SQL statement:

> SELECT “Libros”.“Titulo”, “Autores”.“Autor”, “Generos”.“Generos” FROM { OJ “Biblioteca”.“Generos” AS “Generos” RIGHT OUTER JOIN “Biblioteca”.“Autores” AS “Autores” RIGHT OUTER JOIN “Biblioteca”.“Libros” AS “Libros” ON “Autores”.“Indice” = “Libros”.“Autor” ON “Generos”.“Clave” = “Libros”.“Genero” }

I can run the query:

<http://picpaste.com/Screenshot-Biblioteca-native.odb___View1_-_OpenOffice.org_Base__View_Design-1-v1P56AUE.png>

and when I save it, it appears as table in the list of tables. However,
when I try to edit it again, I get this:

<http://picpaste.com/Screenshot-Biblioteca-native.odb___Biblioteca.View1_-_OpenOffice.org_Base__Table_Design-QXdXRZwJ.png>

and I no longer can edit it visually. If I want a modification, I have to
delete the table and create it again from scratch!

And of course, I can not edit nor add fields to the database that way, it
is RO.

How on earth do the OO people expect plain users to use a database?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

20

Hi Carlos

I wonder if mysql-navigator would be a suitable canidate for your needs? (I’m not sure about its development status or dependencies though).

SQuirreL SQL is another graphical tool that might be suitable…