Frank Schönheit - Sun Microsystems Germany wrote: > Hi Andreas, > >> Completely off-topic, just for the records and my personal relieve: > > I changed the subject accordingly ;-) >
Thank you. > One item beforehand: I disagree with that "all-in-one"-files are as > useless as you seem to see them. > [...] > I see your points and I remember the massive requests for an "Access equivalent". OK, it's done this way and my conclusion is not to trust that file format until it guarantees more safety than the average spreadsheet. IMHO the Base file format had been introduced too early. >[...] > The longer we have the current format, the more I am convinced that for > all-in-one database files, ODF - the *package* part of it, not the XML > part - is the wrong choice, exactly because your first two points. Thank you! This statement lets me hope for the better, since it is not anybody's arbitrary opinion. ... >> 3. You can not create desktop-links to reports nor forms. You have to >> open the container and browse to the form or report you want to work with. > > I miss the number of the RFE for this here. > Done: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=85120 > We so far considered this feature not that important. If you (or you and > a lot of voters) can convince us of the opposite, it might be implemented. > > Effectively, this is one point in a long list which some people declare > to be essential. There's a lot of different opinions about a lot of > items on this list ... > Personally, I don't care. From time to time I try to answer some of the questions on the Base forum of oooforum.org or the new user.services.openoffice.org. Opening forms and reports right away from the desktop is a common request. Once a database is ready to use, the user does not want to see the container. He/she wants to (auto-)start the tools to work with. >> 4. Far too many users do not understand the whole concept of embedded >> vs. linked data in a container format. They simply create a "document in >> Base format", connect to an existing set of tables (dBase, text, >> spreadsheet) and expect to get a fully functional database. Or they >> create a "native" one and end up in the middle of nowhere, even if they >> have some experience with Access. > > Hard to argue here, because "expect to get a fully functional database" > (with the implication that this is not the case), and "end up in the > middle of nowhere" are not really clear problem descriptions. > Forum member, describing a problem with his linked database which is not fully funtional: > I managed to create a Base document from an existing database. > Query: SELECT "Product", SUM("Amount") FROM "Sales" GROUP BY "Product"; > Error: "Query too complex. Only Count(*) is supported" Right in the middle of nowhere with a native Base document: Csv export is the only way out (although jdbc for hsql exists). A new user has a realy hard time getting relational data into Base through the import wizzard or csv import (problems rebuilding foreign keys based on auto-values, problems with date formats from csv or spreadsheet). All the threads with Dibandhu here and in dba.devel tell some part of the story. I admire his persistant commitment. > I miss the ID of the issue which requests to embed Calc files into > database documents. Or the ID of the issue which requests to offer a > feature to link arbitrary documents into a database document ... > http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=85150 I see some problems on the Calc side which may hinder the implementation or would be exposed when Calc is "married" with Base. > As said above, I don't plan to argue on the database document concept as > such, so adding those features - and perhaps more - which allow a > workflow more like it was in 1.x times is the only way to go. > >> Instead of fixing all that odb-mess it would be far more important to >> implement joins on dBase tables > > Seems we have different priorities here. > Non-relational dBase-directories without joins, without aggregation (Sum, Min, Max,...) nor grouping are a serious issue for some users wanting to use Base with existing data. There is a table format, there are index files, there is write access to the tables, but you can not use it like a real database. Does anybody know, where to find a free o/jdbc driver for dBase? >> and a common set of stored procedures >> for any kind of table. > > Not sure what you mean with this. > Max, Min, Avg, Count,... for all tables. Currently there is Count(*) only which leads to Error: "Query too complex ... only Count(*) is supported" Possibly this is due to the nature of the imported data (no fields with distinct numeric type), but this does not hold true for dBase. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
