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Rekall Now Available Under GPL
Karma Sucks writes "Rekall is one of those killer apps alongside Scribus, Evolution, OpenOffice and Mozilla that could make all the difference for Linux desktop productivity. For those of you not in the know, Rekall is a RAD DBMS similar to MS Access or Paradox and has now been GPL'ed by theKompany. Community development and organization is to take place on rekallrevealed.org."
Office suite apps are great, but all I ever hear
is "There's no Exchange-Calendar equivalent for
non-Windows environments!"
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So many times, I've had to take an application and try to make it work as an enterprise solution....and the problems usually starts with "MS Access". Here's the scenario. A PHB often starts a small database application....often using all wizards. Well, the problem starts here....he usually has NO idea about relational model theory, and uses the wizards to put everything into 1 or two huge tables. He has just enough smarts to get it cobbled together in a hideous way.
He then has one or two others to start using it...and soon it spreads to others. So, now, you have a large number of un-sync'ed copies of this mess floating around. They try to sync it on a server...and soon find that Access...just isn't meant to be a multi-user application. So, then, it gets dumped on someone like me. "Lets put it on Oracle and make it web based." Then...you try to find out the datamodel....and the trouble begins. You have to basically learn the business rules they are trying to work within...and you re-engineer the whole thing. You normalized the model....then, the trouble comes in with migrating the data.
Mixed case table_names and column_names are just the beginning. Then, you get the fun part of trying to intelligently parsing all the important data...that they stored in the thing in various free from text fields.
No...a tool like MS Access in the hands of managers with just enough knowledge to be dangerous is a BAD thing.
That being said...I'm going to go back and look at this product and article...and give the app. a fair shake. But, please, in the future, if wanting to post about a new and great DB type application, don't even come close to comparing it with ms access.....that is just a big first strike against it!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
at the moment you have to enter a lame "security number" to do pretty much anything on the website. Good thing I'm not blind and reliant on a screen reader isn't it. A not to people who use features like this, for the sake of those people who do not browse the internet visually (or who use a text mode browser like I find myself using occasionally)...please, for the love of god offer an alternative to the lame securty numbers.
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If it's gpl'd where do we get the source code? I would like to download it.
Actually it should come bundled with sqlite, not MySQL. *That* would make it a true Access-like application, as sqlite files are self contained, like Access MDBs.
Maybe it already does support SQLite; I can't tell because the site is slashdotted.
This is what open source is all about... the strongest will survive.
If no one find the product useful, it will eventually die off.
On the other hand, it could be come wildly popular, and take many users/developers from competing open source projects...
This is a problem not with just databases / RAD tools but in general.
The issue is that you can find scores of OSS developers that are driven by "cool, Windows / OS X has it, Linux does not, let's port / write for it" mentality.
But there are very few who are actually capable to come up with something truly new.
I have been saying all along; lets stop playing catch-up to Windows, Oracle, etc. Open Source truly shines when applied to something revolutionary new. There has been a shortage of new ideas in OSS.
Maybe because the innovation is very individualistic and Open Source is community - based?
No...a tool like MS Excel in the hands of managers with just enough knowledge to be dangerous is a BAD thing.
Come to think about it... any program in the hands of a 'clued up' manager is a BAD thing!
Its a pity the site was slashdotted before I could have a look at it because it sounds just the thing that was missing from open office.
If it supports such things as diagrams and visual representation of tables, I can see this as a really great application. There are other applications like this, most notably pgAccess and pgAdmin (for postgresql), but one that connects to a bunch of things is nice.
These types of apps are great for throwing together the framework of tables for an application. They're also good for managing stored queries (or whatever you call them), as well as viewing table information. You have everything in front of you, so that you can scan it with your eyes while writing your SQL.
PHP is just a language, and doesn't really give you much in the way of DB stuff... You usually have to roll your own application, and then you have security things that you need to attend to. XML isn't really useful at all in this case, since it's usually the result of working with a database, not part of the cause.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
The funny thing is, once you actually know what you're doing (as in undertanding relationships, SQL and what not), access is a pretty good tool... I created a handfull of access databases that not only run over a network share (enabling multi-user access and data entry for thousands of records), my co-workers and I put enough sql and (gasp!) vba code into it that it does all sorts of things; it creates temp tables and primary keys on the fly, automatically sends emails from table lists, checks for consistency, purges tables, etc, etc, etc...
I whole-heartedly agree that anything on the hands of a phb is dangerous, but I also think that if you know what you're doing, access is great....
So what you are saying is that Access is bad because it is easy? That does not make sense.
I have to do this same thing on a regular basis. If you approach the existing app as a model or prototype, then build the new app from the ground up it is not a bad thing.
A startup saving money by making use of a few under-developed apps. How is this a bad thing ? It may cost more in the (very) long term but if it's basically free (boss makes it himself) and lessens the personnel costs in the near term, it's obviously a VERY good thing.
Bad quality products can be very good business-wise too you know.
Of course, you are absolutely right. My fault in perpetuating the idea further with my post. Access, FileMaker Pro and ReKall are desktop database applications that have the ability to connect to multiple RDMBSs.
"The only thing that ReKall provides related to Access is a quick and dirty way to make forms to query your database."
Yet, what a big difference such a belittled feature makes. In the tens of thousands of departments in all the companies in the world, it's FileMaker Pro's and Access' form creation abilities that interests the secretaries who put in requisitions for these products and support Microsoft and FileMaker/Apple.
PowerBuilder's powerful query building tool is nearly everything a database application developer could ask for (minus the stupid syntax within the larger Powerbuilder scripting language). But, where is Powerbuilder, on a secretary's desk or on a developer's desk? I'll tell you something, there are more secretaries in the world than there are developers, and hence there are more Access installations than there are Powerbuilder installations.
Due to its newly Open Source nature, Rekall will eventually have the things you ask for, but you must wait in line for the actual business needs that M$, FileMaker and now TheKompany are answering.
= 9J =
Oh so true, Access is not a "database" at all... However I strongly disagree that it is not useful
Access is a tool which allows rapid application development, ideal for example in building a departmental data warehouse and analysis of data extracted from an enterprise database.
If the resulting information proves sufficiently useful to an organisation then it has to be migrated into something more robust.
It is typical of the IT expert to view this as a problem rather than as a convenient way of discovering what the organisation needs to fill in the gaps left by deployment of enterprise applications. It is an opportunity to improve your business and should be welcomed. You can always rebuild the whole thing from scratch or do it a different way - if the enterprise strength thing you are putting it into allows you do an interface with the same functionality, and often it is very difficult.
The relational model is often held in reverence because of its efficiency, vital for scaleability. Hardware is a lot cheaper and faster than it used to be so this is not the greatest problem. What is a problem is a poor data structure. If you spent a little time helping to ensure that your "managers" understood how to keep the data clean then all you are left with is solving the problem of shoehorning the answer they have built into your enterprise strength relational database. Its not their fault that character case is not supported. Why shouldnt it be?
Sounds more like the complaint of "not invented here" more than anything else to me. Although it could also be something to do with the cost in time and effort to migrate the application - something which the average departmental manager might find prohibitive.
So in the end its a case of neither Access or Enterprise databases being perfect, roll on the day when it gets easier to migrate between RAD tools and robust solutions. I also will be very interested to see just how good this new application is at providing this.
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It seems almost obligatory for /.ers to put down MS-Access any time it's mentioned. I frankly don't understand it. Why it is very unfortunate that such a tool is in the hands of MS and not x-platform, on it's own merits it's a very powerful front end tool. People seem to confuse Access with the novices who use it.
It has a good widget set, it has a functional scripting language, a graphical interface that's good enough for most queries you'll ever write (though it does make ugly SQL), and it has a quite complete event-based system to fire scripts from.
Where Access doesn't seem to have *any* real competition is around its reporting engine. If anyone can tell me how to get all the flexibility and ease of development in reporting that Access has in an OS tool, please tell me! I'd love to switch over.
The default data engine for Access is "Jet", which these days just comes with Windows, but you can use nearly any RDMS through ODBC or pass-through queries, including a "real" one like Postgres.
I've been following the GPL'ing of Rekall with great interest, because I do want to get out from MS's thumb. But in testing it so far I can't get past some glaring bugs (this is in the Win32 version).
Well for a start of a quick look at the website reveals that pgAccess is limited to postgresql only.
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Yet, what a big difference such a belittled feature makes. In the tens of thousands of departments in all the companies in the world, it's FileMaker Pro's and Access' form creation abilities that interests the secretaries who put in requisitions for these products and support Microsoft and FileMaker/Apple.
PowerBuilder's powerful query building tool is nearly everything a database application developer could ask for (minus the stupid syntax within the larger Powerbuilder scripting language). But, where is Powerbuilder, on a secretary's desk or on a developer's desk? I'll tell you something, there are more secretaries in the world than there are developers, and hence there are more Access installations than there are Powerbuilder installations.
I think that is two of the most succintly insightful paragraphs I have ever read on Slashdot.
I would also add that many people begin their journey into computer programming by beginning with Access or Filemaker. This gives them confidence to then seek further instruction in more powerful languages.
I know many snooty purists think this is bad, but there is not much one can do about snooty purists.
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It's primary limitations are:
1. Doesn't play well on a network
2. Doesn't scale all that great
Long ago I spent nearly three years building and maintaining Access databases/front ends.
Generally, with the network access/record locking, performance died after about ten concurrent users.
And with scaling, there were a great number of problems once the table size was greater than 1 million records, which of the 20 systems I built, only one reached this number, after which we moved to SQL server for the data, and kept Access for the front-end.
As you say, for small office applications, it can't be beat. Best RAD reporting tool I have ever used bar none(CR sucks), plus truly rapid development. Excellent for prototyping client/server systems as well.
My only problem with Access was MicroSoft. Shitty tech support. Forever changing licencing arrangements for runtimes and a number of critical bugs in data integrity and security that MS never fixed.
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