Re: Kicking around an idea

On Friday 12 January 2007 15:04, barsalou wrote:

> Additionally, there is something called OOBase (part of Open Office)
> that may provide similar functionality as MSAccess.

I've played with it. An Access replacement is something I look at every so
often. I first used Access with Office 95, and first started making
databases for work & fun with Access 97. For the State even. I would be
happy with an OSS Access 97 replacement.

So far I've not found an open source alternative that can match Access 97 in
forms or reports. Controls on forms that refer to more than one table aren't
easy, updating tables with a form based on a query is hard, coming up with
combo boxes is hard. Krita (the Koffice database) has the same weaknesses.

Access 97 was just a few clicks to make a combo box. Controls from multiple
tables, subforms? You didn't even need to read the documentation
thoroughly - just click on help every so often to figure out the VBA needed
to tweak a wizard generated control, like a button.

None of the OSS office apps has anything like the ease of use of Access.
Anyway, the databases all use database engines tweaked for small databases
(HSQL, etc.)

I'd love a WYSIWYG front end to *SQL that can build complex forms, but I've
never found one. Then you can drop MySQL on a departmental file server, and
let everyone point their small databases at it. No more hunting for .mdb
files on people's C: drive that contain irretrievable personnel data that
isn't being backed up. Not that that would ever really happen, of
course. :)
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Received on Fri Jan 12 18:02:43 2007