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Trail of Tears: MySQL, ODBC, & OpenOffice 1.0

Posted by Hemos on from the getting-it-all-working dept.

Joe Barr writes " I found a wonderful "how-to" piece called "OpenOffice.org 1.0, ODBC and MySQL," by John McCreesh. In the introduction, McCreesh writes about OpenOffice.org 1.0's "best kept secret" -- that secret being the fact that hidden away inside, completely unknown to most OpenOffice users, is a user-friendly front end for databases that is "a Microsoft Access (and more) equivalent." That may be so, but there is a very good reason why it's a secret: it's too damn hard getting OpenOffice and ODBC wired up correctly."

2 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Huh? by Chazmyrr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're right. The guy hasn't paid his dues. He hasn't spent days poring over man pages. He hasn't spent hours trying to recompile his kernel to get it to recognize his NIC. He probably doesn't even know how to use xf86config.

    Then again, maybe the point was you shouldn't have to be a wizard to get an office suite to talk to an odbc datasource. Maybe the point was that real people trying to do real work don't want to be a sysadmin. They just want to get their work done.

  2. Re:Uh, he's a Linuxworld columnist? by j_kenpo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I agree that it should be simpler to set up, but does Joe Sixpack really need to be designing databases?"

    Absolutly, if Joe Sixpack works for a small freight, delivery or trucking company and needs to keep a small database of shipping, customers, destinations, and other small business related matters. Ive seen plenty of smaller companies (1 to 2 offices and handfull of employees) who do this with Access (mostly by means of the pre-built databases and templates, or a consultant/tech set one up for them). This is my point right here, instead of the "why would they" or the "should they be" mind set, it should be percieved from the "Ok, they are going to, so how can I make it easier for them".