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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."
An Ms Access alternative was the last app I needed to be able to switch to Mac OS X. Being able to remotely query and update Oracle and Sql Server databases is quite important for my work. I'm glad to hear progress is being made on this front. If this can be integrated with spreadsheet programs, a great deal of "data analyst" type work will be made easier on UNIX platforms.
The preceding anonymous glowing testimonial has been brought to you by "The Kompany".
It also smells like canned troll...
we've only seen the demos by the local vendor but it is really promising
Local vendor, eh? Hmmm....
OpenOffice *already* has excellent DBMS tools, of the same caliber as MS Visual Studio / MS Access, built RIGHT INTO it. It also has connectors for LDAP, ODBC, JDBC, and other native connectors. Actually its interface for designing queries, which also closely mirrors the MS and ERWIN idea, is far FAR superior to what I see in ReKall.
ReKall and Access are not DBMSs by any stretch of the imagination.The only thing that ReKall provides related to Access is a quick and dirty way to make forms to query your database. It is not anywhere near as powerfull as the database construction and query designer utilities in OpenOffice and Access.
In summary, ReKall has its nieche, providing the small part of Access that OpenOffice didn't provide, but OpenOffice can still do many things ReKall can't.
I know you can't read the article, but a little googling pulled up the fact that Rekall is a RAD Frontend to several DB's, such as MySQL and PostGreSQL.
My day job is doing small business database work in FileMaker. As much as I like using PostGreSQL(I am writing a Perl object framework around it right now), FileMaker rocks its world in terms of quickly building data systems. There is an amazing amount of money to be made designing custom database systems for small businesses.
However, I don't like the cult of personality that seems to insulate FileMaker developers and employees from the rest of the db world. As a whole, they tend to be very defensive about the product and blind to other possibilities. I would be thrilled to be able to offer a client an open source solution.
If Rekall is(or can evolve into) a replacement for FileMaker, I am all for it. It can't come fast enough.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Rekall is *NOT* a database. Also, it *IS* something we need (and didn't have previously). At least, it's something *I* need (and have wanted for a long time).
If you've ever used FileMaker Pro on the Mac or Windows you know we're missing something like this in Linux. Rekall seems to be the answer (since KOffice's Kexi Project is still getting off the ground). Only it's a far superior solution since you can pick & choose which back-end database(s) you want to use (and it's free now!).
Hell, there's even a version of Rekall for embedded Linux!
What Rekall provides that your typical PHP/MySQL solution doesn't, is real-time scripting of events. Sure, you can write some badass javascript that does server-side lookups of info, but that takes a lot of time and isn't very easy to change. With Rekall you can, for instance, create a database of customers. When you type in "Bob Smith" it can auto-fill in the rest of Bob's info (like phone number, address, etc). I know from first hand experience that this is a very difficult thing to do with a web-based form.
Also, an open-source Rekall has the potential to replace things like Remedy, Vantive, Peoplesoft, and other big-name ECRM systems.
Not to mention the fact that Rekall is completely cross-platform.
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
Anyone know how this compares to pgAcess?
If anyone is reviewing might make a good basis for comparison.
I wonder how this relates to this thread (which actually starts here), which were posted to comp.lang.python [tinyurl links point to long google groups URLs]. Seemed like there was some sort of disagreement between theKompany and the main developer. His site is totalrekall.co.uk. A bit of a soap opera, but at least both sides are moving in the same direction (GPL) -- maybe it doesn't really matter who owns the code if they both release it under the same license.
Hmmm..guess you have never met an MBA who also has a BS in Comp Sci and 22 yrs programming experience. You have now. And I can show you a LOT more. Wizards do the basic things, and if you want something more than basic you have to do it yourself, or find a geek to do it. Of course the geek takes 5 days and insists that it has to be the lastest Linux version and has all the bells and whistles and gee-whiz-bang stuff in it when all you wanted was something that works quickly and adds data extracted from a database and does a few business calculations like ROI, and oh you needed it in 2 hours. It gets really tiring to see all the bashing of MBAs. Oh yes, this is /. the home of the teenagers and college kids who know it all.
This is a post from one of the two developers a few days ago. This might be the reason for the release. Does anybody know about?
And, will Recall and Total Recall stay as an application or will they fork?
How will this affect Kexi?
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