Re-opened the Base/Writer project I did for my brother-in-law's parts database.
I stepped into the sweet spot of toy (or private) applications that you can do with Base. If the number of users or the number of records begins to scale up, I run into the problems that everyone else encountered. The main difference is that I did my code in Python, which was a different animal than Basic-like languages such as Gambas. If I ever get a short vacation from caring for grandchildren and elderly in-laws, I could look at an accessible database solution. But unless you are very young, you may not live to see it. Charles in NJ Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Mike Ray <[email protected]> Date: 11/30/2014 7:42 AM (GMT-05:00) To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Hpr] @Ahuka; Libreoffice base? Nigel, Useful info. I haven't written Access since about 1999 and at that time it was Access 97, which I think was the top of the tree, since which it sounds like it has become bloated and more difficult to use. I will give gambas a look, but of course it will need to be accessible. wysiwg drag-and-drop form designers are a dead-loss when you can't see. I assume, like most things, that it writes XML files to store it's form designs so even if it isn't too accessible on the design front it might be possible for me to hack the forms some other way. I think I am about to get involved with some development for which Access would be good, but cross-platform would be better as it is involving libreoffice calc. I have used sqlite very successfully in other projects so gambas and sqlite is sounding good. First I have to persuade a bunch of suits that 'Open Source' isn't synonymous with ritual murder and crimes against humanity. The last line of your post anticipated what I was thinking and which I will save that nice Mr Fallon the trouble of saying 'do a show, do a show'. Mike On 30/11/2014 11:31, Nigel Verity wrote: > > > > > > > Hi > > I also used to be an Access developer. When I came over the fence to Linux > (2008) I looked for an equivalent tool and made the assumption that > LibreOffice Base would fit the bill. I spent several months off and on > attempting to reproduce the sort of user interfaces and functionality that > are simple and commonplace in Access. > > The single most limiting factor is the form designer. Because a Base form is > really a variant of a Writer document you have a lot less control over the > general appearance and visual wizardry which you can employ. At best a Base > application GUI looks like something from the very early days of Visual Basic. > > The programming language (a Basic variant) is powerful, but you often need a > lot of code to achieve what may require one or two lines in Access. If you've > ever created a GUI in Visual C++ and the same in VB/VBA then you will > appreciate the scale of the difference. > > I found the native HSQL database to be very slow once the tables start > getting large - at least in its LibreOffice implementation. You would be > better off connecting to a different engine. MySQL gave pretty good > performance, but then you are moving outside the core Access concept. > > Eventually I gave up on Base and looked around for something else. I > discovered Gambas, which is a development environment using the Basic > programming language. It's very close to VB in both concept and > implementation - in fact better in many ways. This can connect to a SQLite > database in 4 lines of code. You can use explicit coding to interface with > the database but Gambas also provides data objects and bound controls. With > SQLite as a single-file database, a Gambas + SQLite application is as close > to an analog for Access as you will find on Linux, with much the same level > of developer-friendly functionality as Access provides as well. > > The latest couple of versions of Access (post ribbon) have introduced massive > amounts of bloat and become more cumbersome for the developer. Gambas avoids > all that, making it a pleasure to use. > > In brief, Base is the one module of LibreOffice which falls well short of its > Microsoft equivalent. It has its uses for simple tasks like mail-merge but as > a development environment I would avoid it. In my view, for the Access > developer migrating to Linux, Gambas + SQLite is the way to go. If you're > still on Windows then you're best to bite the bullet and stick with Access. > > http://gambas.sourceforge.net/en/main.html > https://sqlite.org/ > > Just writing this is giving me ideas for an HPR episode...... > > Regards > > Nige (aka Beeza) > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Hpr mailing list > [email protected] > http://hackerpublicradio.org/mailman/listinfo/hpr_hackerpublicradio.org > -- Michael A. Ray Analyst/Programmer Witley, Surrey, South-east UK "Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla" (It's a long way by the rules, but short and efficient with examples) Interested in accessibility on the Raspberry Pi? Visit: http://www.raspberryvi.org/ From where you can join our mailing list for visually-impaired Pi hackers _______________________________________________ Hpr mailing list [email protected] http://hackerpublicradio.org/mailman/listinfo/hpr_hackerpublicradio.org
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