Hello Franco,
Hello Frank,
(as you might have noticed already, it's not just me here, so no need to
address me explicitly :)
1. queries built on more than one table are totally not editabile;
Cannot say much about this except: Yes, it's a known drawback, but I
cannot say when it will be addressed.
2. any relationships between queries or queries and tables are not allowed
Relationships between queries sounds a little bit weird, but alas, MSA
allows for it. However, I doubt that this will be available in OOo soon.
Also, I am not really sure that it gives you that much advantages over
relationships between tables.
3. queries built on others queries or queries and tables are not allowed;
You might be interested in the mail I recently forwarded to this list
here :)
3. in case of external databases, such as datasheets, the resulting
tables in Base are read-only,
As said elsewhere, for text files you might be able to use the TEXT
TABLE feature of HSQLDB (OOo's default DB engine), though there's no UI
support for it currently. See http://hsqldb.org/doc/guide/ch06.html.
For the rest: There's a long-standing issue (whose number I don't find
currently) which requests write access to Calc files. Again, I don't
know when this will be addressed, and which priority the Calc-people
give to it. Personally, I don't think that this is too important: You
could use a real DB backend, or you could use Calc to modify Calc files ...
but the worst thing is that the user
cannot create any relationship between that tables and consequently any
queries with more than one table.
Creating relationships between tables is not a pre-requisite for
creating queries with more than one table, you mix things up here.
Relationships are for maintaining data integrity, something you can
hardly do with a spreadsheet backend (every "normal" edit via Calc could
potentially destroy this integrity).
Queries on multiple tables: Yes, this is desirable (the more since if
implemented, then text, dBase, and spreadsheet database would benefit
from it). However, I fear that this is on no short-term plan currently.
If somebody wants to volunteer to implement this, this would be most
welcome.
I have always thought that this kind of functionalities make the
difference between relational databases and flat ones. Am I wrong?
Once, many years ago, I somewhere read that the most of users actually
use Access as a flat database and not as a relational one. Perhaps this
is still true, also for Base?
Well, the backends in question here - text files, dBase, and
spreadsheets - are in fact "flat" databases. What Base currently does is
bringing the data to the user only. But Base does *not* have an own
engine which is able to put relationality on top of those flat data
storages.
What Base *does* have is a) the integrated HSQLDB database, which offers
everything you might wish from a relational DB and b) the possibility to
connect to a wide variety of relational databases of your choice.
In other words: When you use flat data storages, Base currently cannot
enrich them for you (though this would be possible, of course). However,
if you use the "proper" database, then you also get the functionality
of a RDBMS.
Ciao
Frank
