John Toliver wrote:
I am working on a database to manage medical information and ease the
generation of paperwork. I make many changes to the database as I work
on it, and learn how databases work. What tool exists that allow me to
keep track of and manage these revisions to this file? So that a week
from now I may discover that something I did was a bad idea, I can go
back to the version before I made the change, and begin again from there
etc.
I looked at the tool called "bazaar" used in the Linux world but found
it seems not to recognize changes made internally to the database. What
other solutions might I investigate?
Hello John,
The easiest version control system is just to create snapshots -
"File>Save AS" and give the file a name with a date component.
I know it isn't all 'techie', but for a single person project it works.
Also saving the database ( schema ) minus the forms, queries and reports
that make up the Base file can be more problem then it's worth. You will
find as you go along that changes to the tables will become much less
frequent but changes to queries, forms and reports will continue.
One tip - compact your file before you do the saves. ( For instance,
your Base file might be 1,473K currently - if you compact it - it would
be only 770K [how did I know that?] )
To do this:
Open the SQL window ( Tools>SQL)
Enter the command
CHECKPOINT DEFRAG
Click on the execute button
But - if you just want to create backups of the database:
HSQL supports the SCRIPT command. Using this you can extract all the
commands to rebuild your database schema ( the tables, views, indexes
and constraints ) and the data to a single text file. Even if you have
binary data in your file it will be extracted in a textual form. This
file can be large, but can also be compressed with any standard
archiving application and the compression ratio is usually very large.
To do this interactively you would
Open the Base file.
Open the SQL window ( Tools>SQL)
Enter the command
SCRIPT <FILE NAME>
Click on the execute button
If <FILE NAME> does not include a full path the file will be created in
the OpenOffice.org program directory , so you usually want to give a
full path. Of course you could build a neat little macro/dialog to do it
also...hmmm, might be a fun utility...
Anyway - If you want 'techie' then any of the version control systems is
as good as another, IMO. You might consider the extension OOoSVN (
available at http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/OOoSVN) ,
this will use the subversion version control system and adds the needed
menu interface to the OpenOffice.org application. You will need to setup
subversion on your machine and create a repository however. I haven't
used it yet ( the extension, I do use subversion for a couple of things
), but have been considering it. It is still in BETA ( the extension
that is ) however there are a few folks on the forum that say it is
working without problem - none are AFAIK using it with Base files however.
Drew
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