[HN Gopher] Use LibreOffice Base as a GUI for an SQLite Database...
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Use LibreOffice Base as a GUI for an SQLite Database in OS X (2016)
Author : MonkeyClub
Score : 79 points
Date : 2022-12-26 12:53 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.andrewheiss.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.andrewheiss.com)
| janvdberg wrote:
| I know this is not about MS Access perse, but I still feel there
| is a void concerning decent MS Access FOSS alternatives. MS
| Access hit a certain sweetspot between functionality and ease of
| use that I haven't seen anywhere since. Retool or Airtable are
| always named as viable alternatives. But they're not imho.
|
| I have built many MS Access applications and they always were
| surprisingly resilient. I believe even to this day there is a MS
| Access database GUI application running somewhere I built 15
| years ago. Standalone, not connected to the web or anything. Just
| plowing away, just a single self contained file (mind the Office
| dlls etc.), backup and recovery is as easy as copying the
| complete file over to anywhere else and you're good.
|
| I think I have tried every alternative out there, but none hit
| that sweetspot (they always lack something).
| bb88 wrote:
| It's sometimes surprising that the simpler the solution the
| more effective.
|
| Cloud based can be very convoluted as a solution as it has to
| solve all the corner cases. And then you have to worry if the
| cloud provider will drop your data or let you export it easily
| for backup -- which they may or may not let you do easily.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Related: You can use the Fossil bug tracker as a generic SQLite
| table. You can modify the interface for any type of input. While
| you can edit the schema if you want to use it as a traditional
| SQL database, I've found it easiest to treat one of the text
| columns as JSON and do queries on that.
|
| The advantages: You get a web interface for free (using CGI) if
| you want one, it's distributed and version controls your database
| automatically. You can view reports graphically, at the command
| line, or from any other app that read an SQLite database. And in
| terms of stability, since Fossil is developed by the SQLite
| project, you can be confident that it'll be maintained for the
| rest of your life.
|
| https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'm actually half surprised there isn't an office database app
| that is simply sqlite3 file/tables that uses a couple special
| tables to store the forms layout/logic with a relatively simple
| player application.
|
| Funny how useful MS Access is after all these years, despite a
| few competing options over the years, with none really taking
| hold and no really good open-source alternatives.
| chunkyks wrote:
| That's what kexi was supposed to be. https://kexi-project.org/
|
| I tracked it for a long time, just was never able to make it
| fit my needs
| happyjack wrote:
| I've used this setup before as well! LibreOffice Base is a great
| GUI and the form field is super customizable.
| ilyt wrote:
| I used similar setup ages ago with MS access and MySQL ODBC
| connector, we used it for license management in helpdesk,
| basically a way to easily create CRUD apps
| zie wrote:
| Using LibreOffice 7.4.3.2 on MacOS Monterrey(12.6.1) on x86 I
| couldn't make it work, due to this bug:
| https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133056
|
| Which has been around 2yrs and hasn't been fixed yet. The work
| around of un-signing didn't work either.
|
| So as cool as this is, it doesn't seem to be very usable, which
| might be why nobody bothers to document it.
| account-5 wrote:
| I've attempted to use Libreoffice Base as a replacement for
| Access for a very simple single user database a while back, as I
| didn't want to fork out for Access. I failed miserably,
| everything seemed hard to do compared to Access (I'm aware this
| might be somewhat down to familiarity). Unlike Access there seems
| to be little in the way of help online for Base. I couldn't get
| the GUI to populate a listbox from a query, and the GUI appears
| very limited; very bad experience. I think the GUI would be the
| last one I would use as a front end for anything, it seems
| designed in a way that necessitates Googling to do the similist
| of things, but like I said above returns next to nothing useful.
| Very frustrating.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| 100% this.
|
| I _really want_ LibreOffice Base to be usable as an Access
| replacement, but it seems that it's simply there to tick off
| the box "database tool for the office suite". So it implements
| the necessary features that this box would require, but the
| corners haven't been rounded off.
|
| I'm sure people must be using it to various extents, but it
| definitely lacks the basic accessibility to its features that
| Access provides.
|
| I sort of posted the link to also check how other HNers may use
| it, and it seems that your experience matches mine: I'd love
| for it to be easier to use.
| petilon wrote:
| You can use https://airforms.com/ as a replacement for Access,
| for the forms side of things. It doesn't have reporting though.
| rout39574 wrote:
| I've been looking for something like this; I've described it as
| "Paradox for DOS for sqlite". Simple TUI for CRUD operations with
| foreign key enforcement. Libreoffice as a toolkit, so it becomes
| "Paradox for windows for sqlite" would be OK.. :P
|
| Not a webapp. Something you can run inside a git checkout, and
| get an essentially equivalent UX in any terminal. I'd expected
| that Python would be rife with such projects, but it seems that
| "Just build a webapp with my favorite toolkit" is a solution that
| satisfies most of the itches.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| It's weird that in the 80s and 90s, "database" was a standard and
| integral part of pretty much every office suite from every
| software company.
|
| Other than Access, that seemed to change overnight, and now it
| barely is a thing you can do with your computer at all, and even
| Access is aimed exclusively at enterprise usage.
|
| I wonder why. I often think that a desktop GUI database app would
| be very useful, but with the possible exception of the
| aforementioned LibreOffice Base, this barely exists at all.
| jojobas wrote:
| Main use cases for Access and the like seemed to be roll-your-
| own mini accounting/inventory control applications. Good
| riddance.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Spreadsheets became more capable (larger screens, better
| formatting options) so now the target audience for a small
| scale database is just using that instead.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Some years back we considered developing some sort of
| spreadsheet-esque frontend to a database (SQLite primarily, but
| also MySQL and Postgres) that would let you "live manipulate"
| either tables directly or, much more conveniently, "views"
| generated via queries or from virtual tables (with changes
| propagating backwards to the original source). The problem was
| that the userbase for such a tool is _almost_ non-existent.
| People are either using Excel (or even MS Access!) and not
| looking to use anything else, or else they 're more technical and
| can get by with a combination of manual queries plus the visual
| table mode in a tool like DB Browser for SQLite and its ilk.
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