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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."
we get a story about something called "Rekall".
Coincidence? I think not.
Like, isn't that for us to determine, you know? I mean, they say it's RAD, for sure. But what if, like, I don't agree?
= 9J =
See here.
:)
Cool, it has a proper report designer and scripting. Not your average lame db frontend
Am I a hipster-doofus?
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.........
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.
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.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
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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I am the director, and this is my movie