Re: [dba-users] A call for review

[Andrew Jensen]

Marc Santhoff wrote: Hi Andrew, Frank, and the silent readers, compatibility is a fine thing, but in the further development of base you should be aware of some important facts: Am Mittwoch, den 28.09.2005, 10:05 +0200 schrieb Frank Schönheit - Sun Microsystems Germany: Since one major strength of MSA is the capability to create database-driven applications (which don't look like databases at all), the target audience of Base should (should! see below) be the developers of such applications - this in fact is my serious and deepest belief. You're right, creating database applications is not for the ordinary user, it wasn't before and still isn't after MSA appeared. Microsoft tries to compensate this issue by throwing in masses of "wizards" and samples to lower the barrier. This is worth a thought! OOo Base 2.0 does not allow for this audience, for a number of reasons, of which you mentioned a lot: the "forms are text documents"-problem, the missing macro capabilities, the immense complexity of (important parts of) the API, and so on. For quite a while now, the OOo team (the Sun part of it, honestly) is discussing what we (!) think should be the goals for post-2.0, and I constantly argue that we should make Base a platform for application development, exactly for the "applications" targeted at the groups of 3 to 9 users you're mentioning. There are many concurrent database creating applications, some are already dead, other aren't. Many of them are still in use because they do their task. If you ask people that know more than MSA they can tell you the pros and cons in comparison. Hopefully I did not give the impression that I am advocating a MSA clone. I am not! It is a parody of functionality that I am interested in, not look and feel. Even this parody is, in my mind, is the start not the finish. For example there exists a further market, one that MS has struggled with, but that they actually offer a compelling case for. This is that they can scale from 1 user to hundreds of users and not have to leave the family of products. It is not just MSA by SQLServer also. In there case it is C/S or ASP under IIS fot the larger implementations. In the case of OO.o my mind quickly jumps to the possiblity of a tight integration with HSQLDB server, Apache Tomcat and OO.o XForms on the client. If there where a clear path to this then OO.o would be positioned to make the same arguments. OOoBase native file format for 1 user (Maybe expanding this in later releases to handle very small work groups), OOoBase HSQL file based for small user groups, OOoBase HSQL Server C/S for medium sized organizations and HSQL Server, Tomcat (JBoss perhaps, oh yeah and I think SUN actually has an App server also *smile*) OOo XForms for distributed systems. I think base should do better in general, take the best of *all* worlds not only one, please. Copying only the look and feel of MSA leads to making the same mistakes. In my opinion a database app should be easy to use and understand, however this goal is reached. Running after Microsoft is a race that never can be won. Regards, Marc --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]