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

Something open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to set up?! Never!

Huh?

[BoomerSooner]

The "journalist" who wrote the article said his friend was having a hard time getting MySQL, OpenOffice and Linux (Suse) to work. He then lists that his friend can 1) network computers 2) make anything work in DOS and Windows and 3) simply installed the RPMs.

I'm not sure what the hell qualifies this guy to be able to do much of anything in Linux much less tie MySQL to OO via ODBC.

Re:Huh?

[Chazmyrr]

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.

Re:Huh?

[Tackhead]

> 3) simply installed the RPMs.
>
> I'm not sure what the hell qualifies this guy to be able to do much of anything in Linux much less tie MySQL to OO via ODBC.

Yeah! Stupid fucking luzer! He heard that "RPMs" were packages you "installed". So he installed them!

What a fucking luser. He's not worthy of running MySQL with an office package via ODBC.

He's, like, such a fucking luser, he's only qualified to... umm... click SETUP.EXE and install MS Access and MS Office, which, umm... oh...

...look. We were just kidding all along. Some people have taken that to mean that this is using spreadsheets hooked into live databases to solve engineering or business problems.

It's not. It's about using a cool technology (MySQL) and another cool technoogy (Open Office) and a third cool technology (ODBC), and, like, who cares if only the developers on the project can get it to work. Getting it to work - scratching that itch - is what counts. Once we've got it working, we can go on to playing with the next shiny thing.

If it's about using the software, just use that Microsoft crap. What's that? You say that even though it's crap, at least you can install it in 20 minutes and start doing your business or engineering problems with it? Geez, it's always about you, isn't it?

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...

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:Secret?

[Mr. Smoove]

It has been completed and is ready for inclusion in the next release of OOo (1.1) - the beta of which is due out towards the end of this month.

MySQL, ODBC, OpenOffice haikus

[Anonymous Coward]

Install MySQL?
Better get support contract
Config files scattered

ODBC's pow'r
Links data hither and yon
Like many silkworms

Free office software
Fighting forces from Redmond
Freedom is power

Relevant comments
Readers like them, yes they do
Thoughtful minds welcomed

Lame haikus you say?
OK bub, then write your own
Not so easy, huh?

Re:MySQL, ODBC, OpenOffice haikus

[Chocolate Teapot]

You are a troll
A shameless waste of bandwidth
Keep up the good work ;)

Re:MySQL, ODBC, OpenOffice haikus

[Chocolate Teapot]

Oh crap! I screwed up!
Moderators do your worst
Flame my sorry ass

Trail of Tears?

[mr100percent]

Hey, I wouldn't use "Trail of Tears" as the headline.

The Trail of Tears was the forced emigration of Native Americans from the South to Oaklahoma. It was brutal and painful, and something that Americans don't like to talk about.

"In one of the saddest episodes of our brief history, men, women, and children were taken from their land, herded into makeshift forts with minimal facilities and food, then forced to march a thousand miles(Some made part of the trip by boat in equally horrible conditions). Under the generally indifferent army commanders, human losses for the first groups of Cherokee removed were extremely high... About 4000 Cherokee died as a result of the removal. The route they traversed and the journey itself became known as "The Trail of Tears" or, as a direct translation from Cherokee, "The Trail Where They Cried" ("Nunna daul Tsuny"). "

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?

[blaine]

Eh. On the one hand, yes, political correctness sucks.

On the other hand, comparing the configuration problems inherent to OpenOffice with the Trail of Tears is pretty obnoxious. I mean, what next, "Linux Networking: 9/11 All Over Again"?

I really don't think this is a case of being overly politically correct. It's more that the author of the article used an entirely inappropriate title, given the subject. Comparing computer configuration problems with the death of thousands is, well, shitty.

Re:Trail of Tears?

[feed_me_cereal]

However, why does everyone have to be sensitive to everything that might offend anyone?

I don't know about all situations, but some assholes sailing over to your country and making you march to your death doesn't seem that comparable to the hassle of setting up open-office. So why is mentioning the significance of the trail of tears a bad thing? At worst, someone gets educated.

I find the political correctness thing is now as bad as censorship

How is it any different from correcting or offering a dissenting opinion? People are allowed to voice their opinion about things, even about what speech they find offensive. By your logic, critique is censorship just because people will be afraid of being critiqued and therefore not speak. That's BS. You're responsible for the things you say, whether you like it or not.

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)

Well then that PC guy is a moron and we can all laugh at him (allong with any cowards who actually bend to his will). It's a far cry from pointing out a comparison between installing OSS and mass-murder. Don't oversimplyfy political correctness. You're just as bad as the "PC freaks" you malign.

Re:Trail of Tears?

[extra88]

It's a poor use of language. "Trail of Tears" has a very specific meaning which is way beyond the sentiment they're trying to convey (which any U.S.-ian should know but probably doesn't since we're so ignorant of history). Exaggeration is fine but this is taking it to an extreme. You might as well go all the way and call the article "MySQL, ODBC, & OpenOffice 1.0, a Configruation Holocaust." Actually that might not be as bad because "Holocaust" is qualified with an adjective which indicates its scope. No, it still sucks.

Powerful words should be used carefully, otherwise their glib use leaves our language impoverished and trivialized.

Re:Trail of Tears?

[salesgeek]

Political Correctness is a problem - sometimes. But in this case, it is at a level higher than PC. Perhaps because we never again want to see another people go through what our people have been through.

To a Native American like myself, to compare a great human tradgedy to your problems with an incomplete piece software is insulting. It trivializes the death of much of my people and the death of our entire way of life and culture. It's just a bad analogy.

C is a tool. The person programming the bomber is a toolmaker. The pilot is alas a soldier following orders, the orders come from a government, and that government exists at the privelidge of the people it serves.

Re:Trail of Tears?

[Reality Master 101]

it's important to understand that offense is in the eye of the offended, not the offender.

NO NO NO!! Sorry to come off so strongly, but this is completely and TOTALLY wrong.

You cannot define offense by who is offended, because you can ALWAYS find someone who is offended by ANYTHING.

The rational point of view is looking at the intent of what someone is saying. I'm particularly reminded of someone who was fired for using the word "niggardly" in a staff meeting! A black person was offended, even though the word has absolutely nothing to do with the word "nigger", and the person was forced to resign. Is this really the world you want where the idiots who get offended decide who gets lynched (word used intentionally)?

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.

Re:OLE DB??

[sandman_eh]

Yeah lets screw open standards.

Admittely ODBC is/was gennerally improved AFAICT by microsoft, it is essentially still an X/Open standard.

It is availble on many platforms, Mac/VMS/Unix/Windows and probably others too. It is a relative striaghtforward C API for database access. Ok, native access could be quicker but I think you'd find difficulty building a thinner layer for all databse engines.

Lets be honest about this two in many cases I reckon you will find OLE DB implement on top of the ODBC drivers . Not that I've ever used OLE DB being a crossplatform developer.

Uh, he's a Linuxworld columnist?

[yoz]

Two points:

1: The writer of the piece, talking about his install troubles, is a Linuxworld columnist. Now, this may not give them kernel-developer-like skills, but...

2: ... how leet should Linux users be before they can install an MS Access equivalent? On Windows, you can do it with a few clicks. It sounds like you want the Linux equivalent to come with a 10-page exam.

-- Yoz

Re:Uh, he's a Linuxworld columnist?

[sporty]

It sounds like you want the Linux equivalent to come with a 10-page exam.

4 pages max. Unless it was an essay.

Re:Uh, he's a Linuxworld columnist?

[j_kenpo]

I agree with you totally on both points. If the guy is a Linuxworld columnist, he probably has at least a basic understanding of the technical side of Linux and Linux app installs (there's not telling really, since he is a columnist, and in my opinion the old saying about those who cant teach applies more to columnist than to teachers these days). With that being said, if someone who has at least a basic understanding of Linux has that much difficulty installing something like this, than "Joe Sixpack" isn't going to be able to figure it out either. But this goes into the age old problem with Linux on the desktop, do the developers keep the mentality of "If you don't like it, fix it yourself, its open source", or do they take the mentality of "Well, I can figure it out, and the next developer can figure it out, but can the average person figure it out?" Once OS developers look at it in the later fashion, then we will start seeing real gains as far as usability. IMHO, that's the difference between Computer Science graduates and Information Systems graduates, one sees things in the more technical side, the other sees it in the usability (business wise, if its easier to use and provides functionality, then its more marketable) side. And ill make the assumption that most OS developers are CS people. Id be interested to hear others opinions on this.

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.

Re:Uh, he's a Linuxworld columnist?

[j_kenpo]

"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".

Re:Uh, he's a Linuxworld columnist?

[yoz]

Yes and the few click method generally leaves security holes wide enough to drive a bus through. That method is obviously working.

No, poor security design generally leaves security holes wide enough to drive a bus through. Fast, easy installers with secure defaults generally leave happy users with less hair torn out and less anger at ivory-tower developers who think you should already know a piece of software inside and out before being allowed to install it.

Since when did usability design equate to wide-open holes, apart from in the minds of those who think spending two hours hand-editing a makefile is a vital entry requirement for those who want to use basic office software?

-- Yoz

Re:MySQL haiku: get it right

[Chocolate Teapot]

Petty nitpicker
You spoiled the joke entirely
I thought it was good.

Re:Yes..

[PigleT]

You get an _isql_ with unixODBC, and an _odbctest_ with iODBC (see http://www.iodbc.org/ - there is choice amongst driver-managers, and iODBC even comes with a gtk config app looking relatively similar to Windoze' ODBC Administrator, if you like that sort of thing).

Re:Who cares

[fishbowl]

>Are there seriously still people who don't have
>MS Office?

There are projects for which the price of MS Windows and MS Office will preclude the project being done. Such things may not matter to you, since you obviously either have working capital or are willing to compromise your ethics. What if your entire expected revenue was less than the price of that software, but the system you want to develop has value other than cash value? Because of the price of Office, you're suggesting that such a project should not even be done.

That's not your call. It's okay that there are alternatives, and that people choose to use them!

Re:Secret? ( Adabas )

[Locutus]

It's probably not unknown to those who've use the StarOffice v5.x database ( Adabas = SoftwareAG ). Granted, OO doesn't have the ODBC driver for that free Adabas database but if you've got the SO v5.x CDROM, you've got the driver.

It's working fine here.

BTW, it might not be well known that the database shipped with Sun's StarOffice 5.2( Adabas ) can be run as a multi-client database if you start the server on the right port. Here's a startup script:

x_server -p 7200
sleep 1
x_start dbaseName
sleep 2
xutil -d dbaseName -u control,user-passwd restart

StarOffice and OpenOffice just need to know where the file "./lib/odbclib.so" is. IIRC

LoB

MySQL vs Access

[lspd]

This certainly isn't the first or last attempt to wrap a user friendly UI on top of MySQL, but I think attempts to push MySQL + a nice GUI as an Access killer are mistaken.

My own experience with Access is fairly limited, but from what work I have done with Access, it seems that the biggest benefit is entirely ignored by this and other products like The Kompany's Data Architect. Access lets you take everything (data, reports, forms, queries, etc) and shove it all into a single portable file. Burning a copy to CD-R or Floppy is a snap, and it seems to be much easier for the clueless to wrap their heads around the idea of a database + reports + forms as a single file. I tried to sell a non-profit organization on the idea of MySQL + custom interfaces as a replacement to their quirky Access databases and they were completely unplussed by the idea.

It seems like such a simple idea to combine perl or Python forms, HTML, XML or PDF reports, and Data into a single gzipped file (maybee even a file that runs on it's own without any third party software other than a perl or python interpriter.) I don't get why so much effort seems to be directed at making MySQL user friendly instead. MySQL seems like complete overkill as an Access replacement. GNutrition is a good example of this problem.. Why in the world do you need a MySQL server for something so simple?

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.

It's not offensive because of p.c.-ity...

[for(;;);]

it's offensive because the two things are of totally different proportion. (Frankly, calling Bill Gates a Nazi is the same way.) This article's title is like naming your Cisco Router "The Auswitch" because you don't dig the restrictive interface; or equating the VCR with the Boston Strangler.

The Cherokee Nation had a bicameral legislature, newspapers, and cities. This was a full nation that Andrew Jackson forcibly expelled to Oklahoma. Comparing this ethnic cleansing to one's ODBC setup bugaboos is shit-headed.

Hey, I'm not saying whoever wrote this shouldn't be allowed to say it. But neither should that person be kept from derision, like a darling little prince. Whoever thought up the title of this article is a cockmaster. Deal with it.