Am 07.02.2012 23:08, Dan Lewis wrote:
A spreadsheet (Calc or Excel ) cab be used as a back end data
source and Base as the front end. How does this fit into this
discussion?
We were talking about the process to turn a collection of spreadsheet
lists into a relational database. I tried to explain that this involves
a lot more than copying data and adding forms.
A spreadsheet as data source of a Base document is not a database at
all. It is a way to present spreadsheet data as if they were stored in a
database. Some sheets may contain matrices, descriptive text or any mix
of data rather than database-like lists.
I use this quite often for "fuzzy address collections" copied and
dragged around from various other sources. Finally I collect everything
in a Base query and tell "my users" to use this query for a certain
serial letter.
The beauty of data sources is that the user who needs to compose a
serial letter or label printing, does not even need to know where the
data come from. All he/she needs to know is the name of the data source
and the name of a query. The rest is always the same.
Remember that Base will only create queries and reports from the
spreadsheet. Neither fields, views, nor tables can be created, modified,
or deleted. All of these types of changes must be done in the
spreadsheet.
Also, what about saving each sheet of the spreadsheet as a dBase
file?
It is the best database format for flat lists. You can edit the data
directly in the data source window. dBase is editable, can be indexed
for fast lookups and it has no practically relevant row limits. But the
built-in dBase driver does not provide relations and the query
limitations are the same as with csv or sheets. If you save an
inconsistent spreadsheet as dBase the resulting table will be text only.
So you better check your data.
--
For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected]
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
