Trail of Tears: MySQL, ODBC, & OpenOffice 1.0

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."

Comments

Secret?

[k98sven]

Yes, it may be unknown to most users, but that doesn't mean it's hidden any more than most features in Office.

Anyway, AFAIK a better (non-ODBC) MySQL driver for openoffice.org has been up there on their to-do list for quite some time.

So why not scratch that itch instead?

Re:Trail of Tears?

[monadicIO]

I'm no troll, and have nothing against the native Americans, and have no intention of making light of their sufferings.
However, why does everyone have to be sensitive to everything that might offend anyone?
I find the political correctness thing is now as bad as censorship - there are no laws against saying things, but you'll be demonized for the rest of your life for having said them.
I'm sure one day some PC guy will come along and ask us not to use C because controllers written in C were used in some bomber aircrafts (or something like that).

Re:Trail of Tears?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we live in a culture of victimhood. How else do you explain idiot "Italian American Anti-Defimation" groups complaining about the Sopranos?

(and before anyone pitches a fit I'm as Dago as they come... with a last name that has ten letters and ends in a vowel)

Re:Uh, he's a Linuxworld columnist?

[smillie]

When I was doing coding one of the most difficult things to find was a newbie who was willing to let me watch them use my new program. I could learn a lot by watching someone do something "intuitive" and my code wouldn't behave as they expected. Each time I modified the user interface I had to find a new newbie because the old ones now had preconceived ideas on how it worked. The next problem was that one person wasn't a very large sample. As a normal geed I didn't have all that many friends to draw on.

On Red Hat, with PostgreSQL...

[Micah]

connecting OOo with PG via unixODBC was very, very simple. Yes, it involved editing a couple files -- /etc/odbc.ini and odbcinst.ini, but you have templates and you just need to edit them. Of course, you don't even need to edit config files anymore -- use ODBCConfig. It's all there, assuming you do a full RH8 install.

However, I wouldn't be so generous as to say OOo's database capabilities are as good as Access. You can merge print from your database -- that is quite easy. You can edit table structure and data -- OK, but I find phpPgAdmin works better for that. It even has form components and the ability to navigate a database with a form, but personally I haven't mastered this yet and feel it's a bit on the ugly side. Certainly there needs to be better documentation for forms and for the Basic code you may need to put in to automate forms. It also has a visual query designer -- OK.

Overall, OOo's database tools will be useful for some people but it has a ways to go. For forms, I think GNU Enterprise has quite a bit more potential.

TheJesusCandle steals someone's comment. Again.

[pnot]

I've seen Amazon reviews pasted into /. for a +5 Informative, but I have to admire your sheer gall in pasting in a comment on the same thread from half an hour ago.

Good idea, though. This being Slashdot, nobody checks for dupes ;-).

Hmm, looks like this is a habit of yours. I'm continually amazed that people consider /. karma a sufficiently precious commodity to bother with this kind of thing...

Re:TheJesusCandle steals someone's comment. Again.

[hero]

Hmm, you're quite right. This person exclusively posts plagiarized comments all day, usually they steal a comment that has been moderated +5 for being insightful. However, I suspect karma isn't their ultimate goal, look at the URL they have set: (http://www.keithbowmanauto.com/) They're just trying to get moderated up so more people will see and visit that URL, which is just some lousy car dealership. Just goes to show that if there's a new low level that can be stooped to, advertising will stoop first.

-hero.

Re:Huh?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Well actually this is the last tool I needed to completely cut loose from MS office. I run a database of Volunteers for a large folk festival. Every year I have to send out several mailings to about 1000 people at a time. To automate the process, I shoot out mailing labels in Access. I tried writing my own mailing list program, but frankly I have a database to run. I've written my share of drivers to know that if a canned product will do it for you USE IT.

Now I use OpenOffice religiously, and MySQL (what the present database is written in.) The only reason my Viao still has a Windows partion is for printing the labels. Okay, that and Civ. This is gravy. This is soooo cooool. My head is stuffed with applications for this integration. Must stop posting and start coding...

Re:Trail of Tears?

[Slime-dogg]

How is it any different from correcting or offering a dissenting opinion?

Because you can get fired from your job for saying the "Un-PC" statement. With Political Correctness, you are no more free than the citizens of Communist Russia. There you couldn't speak your mind because you might end up in prison. Here, it's a slightly different story. You can't speak your mind (or even make a mistake in speech) without being crucified by society.

Atlantic Monthly had a nice list of words that have been stricken from school textbooks. Among them were 'Yacht' and 'Cassandra.' 'Yacht' was banned because it was "descriminant against non-wealthy persons," and 'Cassandra' was banned because it's "sexist."

Can anyone tell me how all this shit got to the rediculous level it is at right now? We have some froppish, underfed, vegetarian, neo-leftist leech telling the people of America which words are appropriate and which ones aren't! It is 100% pure, unadulturated bullshit, and you all know it.

All that aside, PC speech doesn't really fit into things of a really sensitive nature. It takes a lot of balls and insensitivity to make jokes about the holocaust, mostly because it just wasn't funny. The Trail of Tears was also a very serious matter, and thus should only be used when referring to the actual event.

Now, persuasive speech promotes the use of extremes, but that's where common sense comes into play. If there's a guy who doesn't have enough sense not to name a computer configuration article after an event that stands for unjust death, an informing of the seriousness is in order. It is inappropriate, however, to censor him, axe the article, or socially crucify him. Some people are just stupid.