On 03/03/2013 10:09 AM, John R. Sowden wrote:
Why do the Libreoffice powers that be define dbase/xbase as a flat file
database, not a relational database. The below definitions from the
Base Intro documentation demonstrate what I am saying:
*Flat databases*
A flat database contains one or more tables, each containing one or more
fields. Each table is completely independent of all the other tables in
the database. For example, I have an address database with seven tables
in it. One has my family's contacts, another has my business contacts,
and another has my wife's family contacts. While some contacts are
contained in more than one table, different tables may not have the same
information about the same person.
dBase is a flat database program. LibreOffice and several database
programs can also create flat databases.
*Relational databases*
Relational databases contain one or more tables with one or more
relationships; each relaltionship is defined by a pair of fields. One
field of each pair belongs to one table and the second field belongs to
the same or a different table. Where relationships exist between fields
in the same or different tables, a flat database could still be used,
but it provides no mechanism for defining the relationship. Instead the
same data must be entered in both fields, making data entry errors more
likely. A well designed relational database requires the data to be
entered only once, reducing possible errors.
dbase is a relational database per the above definition. I link 2
tables with 1 field so I can refer to data in the second database so
data does not have to bbe entered multiple times. In our alarm
monitoring station, when a police dept. changes its phone number, we
change 1 field in 1 database. Hundreds of subscriber records refer to
that field to populate the data screen. It seems that LO ptb either
have a problem with dbase/xbase, or they are (were) uninformed of the
facts.
John Sowden
(been programming in dBase II (under cp/m), Foxbase, Foxpro (under DOS)
since 1981)
See the string "Link Base to External Spreadsheet"
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^ ^ Mark LaPierre
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