Alternative To Microsoft Access
From
Lawrence D'Oliveiro@21:1/5 to
All on Sat Apr 27 04:17:17 2024
XPost: comp.os.linux.misc
If anybody asks about an alternative to Microsoft Access, I think
SQLite used in combination with LibreOffice will give you a lot of functionality, including comprehensive SQL support and scalability to
much larger databases.
Of course you can use other backends, like MariaDB/MySQL, as well.
SQLite just makes it easy to have an actual database file that you can copy/move about the place, without having to do database dumps/restores.
If you don’t need multiuser support, it is very convenient.
I notice that libreoffice-base is now a separate package under Debian
(and I suppose its derivatives as well), no longer included in the
“base” (heh) LibreOffice package. Make sure to install this, along with libsqliteodbc.
Now, say you have an existing SQLite3 database that you want to access
from LibreOffice. Suppose it is in the file
/home/ldo/hack/lo_try/test.db. In order for databases to be accessible
via ODBC, they need to have entries in your ~/.odbc.ini file. This is
just a text file, in the good old .ini tradition. The format for entries
is very simple, e.g.:
[test-db]
Description=Test database for LibreOffice Base
Driver=SQLite3
Database=/home/ldo/hack/lo_try/test.db
Now, when you launch the LibreOffice Base database wizard, you have
options to “create a new database”, “open an existing database file”, or
“connect to an existing database”. Choose that last one “connect to an existing database”. The popup menu shows the available back-end
drivers: choose “ODBC”. Now, when you click “Next”, there should be a text field with a “Browse...” button; clicking this should show the
names of entries in your ~/.odbc.ini file, e.g. “test-db” if you used
the name in my example above.
Select this, and click “Finish”. Next you will be prompted for a name
to save the “database file”. This is just the LibreOffice Base document that contains the settings for connecting to the actual database:
LibreOffice doesn’t know or care where the database back-end keeps the
actual data.
After having named the LibreOffice database file, you should see the
main LibreOffice Base window. In the lower half, under “Tables”, you
should see a list of the tables from the database file. You can
double-click a table name to see a quick list of all its records.
That’s as far as I’ve got. I see a “Design View”, “Form Wizards”, and
“Report Wizards”, and all kinds of other fun stuff. Should be great for building simple database applications, with a minimum of programming.
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