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Simple Database Interfaces for Unix?
Siddly asks: "OK, I've used databases in DOS, like dBase2, dBase3 and others. None of those mentioned needing a knowledge of database theory, they allowed you to layout and manipulate data quite easily. In Linux, we have MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, and more. None of these are intuitive, even the GUI's aren't very helpful to any casual or very occasional user, who just wants to create a simple database and forget it until something significant needs to be added, deleted or amended. I obviously don't posses the skills or time to undertake writing such an animal. Does anyone else suffer this frustration? Has anyone managed to get something like dBase3 working under dosemu?" The problem isn't necessarily the underlying RBDMS, but the interface presented to the user. Are there front-ends for the various Unix database offerings that simplify database concepts to the level of what a dBase3 user would feel comfortable with?
This is a major hassle for me, also. Every computer language needs an associated simple database. There are many, many applications that require storing data in an ordered way that don't require a highly scalable enterprise-quality method like PostgreSQL. For example, it is convenient to store error messages in databases.
It's worth saying again. Every complete computer language should have a simple database and database administration tool as part of the definition of the language. Microsoft's FoxPro is an example of a small database. It can find any record in a million-record database instantaneously. But it is very proprietary.
Perhaps you should try DBDesigner which is quite intuitive, easy to handle, etc. :-)
You can export everything, create a webfront in php, etc.
I use it for my database-class..
It's free, it's os independent. what else do you want?
First of all, just read the first few chapters of MySQL & mSQL by Oreilly and you'll be on your way with "all that database theory" stuff. It's pretty easy actually. I learned how to manage an RDBMS at a fairly young age, especially for a simpler database. If worse comes to worse, Open Office does have some Databasing possibilities. In the end, the tools are out there, you just didn't seem to look to hard. There isn't that much to learn, and you would have found that out if you had tried to learn. The database that you seem interested in making (which I hope is simple, because you can't get away from something like MySQL if it's even just a mid-sized) shouldn't cause you any problems with all of the tools available.
For a straight-up GUI, he might try MySQL Control Center. It's a Qt-based app, so it'll run on Linux and Windows. It lets you build and run queries, manage the server, etc. Even has a "viewer" for images stored as BLOBs.
There's phpMyAdmin as another option. It's web-based, so the "GUI" should run on anything. It does the same kind of stuff that MySQLCC does: lay out tables, create fields, run queries, etc.
On the admin side of things, the upcoming MySQL Administrator looks like it should be very nice. It lets you drop users, tune the DB, monitor the server, etc.
No matter what he winds up using for a GUI, if he uses MySQL, I couldn't recommend the MySQL Cookbook highly enough. It's an amazingly well-written book and very helpful. Every time I find myself with a "what's the best way to do so-and-so..." question, the answer is never more than 30 seconds of page turning away. It's also good for beginners because it's an easy way to find out how to do particular tasks without having to read an entire manual. It'll let a novice user figure out what query to type into MySQLCC, in other words. And the novice user might eventually find out that all the "database theory stuff" isn't all that difficult to learn.
That's about all I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure some googling or trolling through freshmeat will yield some GUI apps for PostgreSQL if that's what he's into using.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I find TOra to be very good.
Its aimed more at Oracle, but will work wth MySQL and PostreSQL.
I use it mainly for inputting and modifying data in a sensible way.
Under UNIX, people traditionally use the file system as the database. It's an intuitive, hierarchical database supporting many of the features you expect from databases. You get hierarchical string-based keys and arbitrary binary content (up to many Gigabytes per key). This works best with ReiserFS, but works well enough with the other file systems as well. And everything knows how to access the file system.
The next database system people use a lot is dbm and its variants. They are good for when you need to hold lots of tiny data items and you need high performance. If your data items are big or you don't need high performance, go back to the file system. Dbm is, again, intuitive, simple, and powerful. And it's accessible from lots of different languages.
If you want something close to an RDBMS without using an RDBMS, have a look at Metakit.
Altogether, I think UNIX/Linux developers should mostly stick with using the file system as a database.
None of these are intuitive, even the GUI's aren't very helpful to any casual or very occasional user, who just wants to create a simple database and forget it until something significant needs to be added, deleted or amended. I obviously don't posses the skills or time to undertake writing such an animal. Does anyone else suffer this frustration?
:)
Regardless of your background you obviously aren't a DBA.
A real DBA uses CLI. It's a well known fact that there is no consistant GUI among different vendors, and in many cases in different version of the same product. We don't look for point and click to perform a task, we'll do it by a list of scripts that we prepared for various tasks and customize them - from scratch(creating database, tables, triggers) to maintainance(expand database, add users, check deadlock, etc.)
I don't know how you could forget the usage of SQL so easy, SQL is made to ease the access of RDBMS, and if it complies to standard, same SQL statement can be used in different RDBMS.
I've no recommendation of GUI frontend for you but I recommend you to look at the SQL reference of the RDBMS of your choice. You'd find GUI hinder you when you get used to SQL statements.
Well, SQL syntax itself is intiuitive enough to be useful even for beginners. What more intuitive do you need from "SELECT * FROM mytable;". You CAN read it like a language for simplier usage, but advanced usage is something which makes GUI's obsolete and useless anyway. If you need advanced manipulation of your data, then most certainly you'll do it from within CLI, not GUI.
Sinisa
None of those mentioned needing a knowledge of database theory, they allowed you to layout and manipulate data quite easily.
Without a knowledge of database theory, you're going to build a bad database that doesn't scale well.
At the very least, you need to know about database normalization, which comes down to not repeating data (and instead repeating keys to that data).
You'll need to know that even though databases are supposed to be "Fourth Generation Languages" ("4GLs") where you just need specify "what" and not "how", in truth there are still a number of implementation details you'll need to be aware of.
Many of these implementation details are, no surprise, implementation specific, varying from one database (or one version) to another. (Sybase, in particular, departs from many other databases with a number of quirks.) Things like how indices are physically represented, what null really means in your database, the subtle difference between a null that means that a column's value is not known and a null that means a row (as in outer joins) does not exist, how flexible views are (if the database supports views at all, you should use them, as they're one of the few ways to abstract your interface from your implementation in a database), the difference (if any) between a view and a user defined function, how auto-increments are generated and passed around, etc., etc., etc.
On a more general level, you'll find that really designing a database makes you sound like, Pontius Pilate talking to Jesus Christ: you'll be spending a lot of time asking "what is truth".
No, really, I'm being serious. A database is an attempt to model reality at some level of granularity. One of the big question is how granular a view you need to take, and how general or specific various tables need to be.
Consider a "simple" database of MP3s: is a track the same as a song, and is that the same as an opus? What about classical recording that make each movement of an opus a separate track? What about non-classical recordings that have spoken introductory tracks? One "song" or two? Is an album a CD? What about multi-CD albums, with disc one and disc two? Is an artist a attribute of an album or a track or a song? (Answer: a song.) Is a group an artist, or is it a set of artists? (Answer: judgment call, but probably the latter.) Is the composer table a sub-type of the artist table? (Answer: yes) Does your database implementation natively represent sub-typing relationships? (postgresql does, in Sybase you have to implement it yourself.) Is the song title an attribute of the track? (Better not be, if you want to represent different covers of the same song together.)
What you're doing here isn't merely telling the database that you need a bunch of tables: you're describing the "truth" that's in the world -- as you see it, and as clearly as you can see it -- and trying to represent that truth in the database.
Long before I was a professional programmer, long before I ever designed any databases, I happened to pick up a book on a bookstore's remainder table for $4.98. The book was about designing databases, and quite a bit of the text was presented as Socratic dialogues between various stock characters, arguing about "what is truth". It's been too many years for me to recall if I still agree or not with all the arguments presented in that book, but it's take-home point -- that designing databases is a search for the truth -- has stayed with me, so I suppose it was convincing.
I hope that you'll take home a point from this post: designing a database is -- or should be -- a rigorous activity that includes much testing of your hypotheses and much recourse to asking yourself what it is you're really representing -- or are able to represent. It's not something that should -- in real cases -- be easy, and having a tool usually gets in the way of really thinking about what you're designing.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Back before SQL was available, mainframes had lots of data accessable via TTY terminals. It was an entirely different method that is rarely in use today. Most existing systems have had a thick client or web interface slapped on the front. When databases moved to those new fangled PCs with loads of RAM - 64k of memory - and loads of storage - 100k discs - they reflected the mainframe way of doing things.
dBase ][ and III were great apps for their time, totally tied to a character terminal, and often the stucture of the database was tied into that character terminal. If you gave a field two characters, there were two character cells on the screen devoted to it. Each screen was a record. Configuration was done with a simple interpreter. Gads - the dot commands... I can't remember a single command, but I remember the periods. Everything else was a field.
Basically, you made a UI. The UI *was* the database, and each time you filled it out, that was a record (keyed by a field in the form? It's been too many years). It's easily doable with SQL (which is why SQL is considered more powerful), but a really really simple front end, a la dBase, I haven't seen.
If you haven't done it, you're likely to not see much of a big deal. It's a shift in thinking more than anything programmatic. Kinda the way unix has "everything is a file", the dBase way might be "the form is the database". Both are gross oversimplifications of how it actually works in practice, however.
There's a more modern db (circa early 90s) that runs in DOS that is dBase like. I can't recall the name, but it was a diehard app with users persisting (probably until today).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I really don't remember much about programs like dBase, other than editing and viewing .DBF files with utilities such as PC Tools, so I could be wrong on this. My vague recollection is that dBase provides a "serverless" database -- a DBF file that can be easily moved from one machine to another without exporting (a la mysqldump), and without the requirement of a heavyweight server continuously loaded into memory. These DBF files could be easily manipulated with simple software programs, or manipulated programmatically with libraries.
It sounds like what the poster wants is a piece of software that would conceptually lie between the lightweight UNIX db/dbm/ndbm/gdbm databases and the heavyweight server-based databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL.
As a programmer, I've often wished that I've had some simple way of storing complex data without having to roll my own solution, or rely on PostgreSQL/MySQL. Also, I have a web designer friend who would love to be able to use database-aware Perl CGI scripts without having to use his web host's SQL servers. (For small applications that REALLY don't need the full power of MySQL -- like banner rotator scripts.) I figure if this hypothetical serverless mini-database could support an SQL parser and have a DBI-compliant DBD driver... presto!
I'd volunteer to whip up an implementation of this idea, but my software to-do list is already enormous. :)
I believe FoxPro is written in C++. There is nothing about a database that would cause a problem with portability. Okay, so maybe there should be a small database that everyone uses, rather than one for every language.
I don't want to be an administrator of an enterprise-level database just because I want to store error messages in a database. I don't want to subject my users to that. There needs to be an intermediate level. There needs to be an easy interface.
I found the SQLite home address on the page you mentioned: SQLite -- An Embeddable SQL Database Engine. I downloaded it and tried the example. SQLite definitely looks like it is an answer. Thanks, that's definitely the kind of database I need. I didn't know about SQLite.
SQL 92 Features That SQLite Does Not Implement. Not many.
Very fancy, and supports every language and its sister:
Is this the answer? Are there any drawbacks? Anyone have experience with SQLite?
"As a programmer, I've often wished that I've had some simple way of storing complex data without having to roll my own solution, or rely on PostgreSQL/MySQL."
I want that, too. Isn't this, from an earlier comment, the answer: SQLite?
The web site says that SQLite is implemented in less than 25K lines of C code, and is faster than MySQL and PostgreSQL for most operations.
I never tried it, but DataDino Database Explorer should do the trick.
WWTTD?
I'm not the original poster, and I know a bit more about modern RDBMS, but I would still appreciate a similar front-end to what he is talking about, for Unix.
Currently, my company uses MS Access for employees to perform data-entry to our Postgres and MySQL databases. We don't plan on keeping our Windows boxes around forever, and we plan to migrate away from Windows and MS Office, so we need a replacement. We've got everything covered, sans MS Access.
I need something that any idiot can use to make forms for data-entry. Does such a beast exist for Unix/Linux/OS X?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
In any english writing class they teach you:
Make a statement, then back that statement up. The previous poster was showing that sometimes there is a reason you need more education to implement a database well.
I suggest MySQL Administrator when it is completed. Or he could just use MS Access. It teaches you everything the wrong way but you can create a functional piece of shit with it.
What is wrong with you slashdot nerdlingerlingers and all these stupid analogies? Do you think it makes you look smarter?
Damn. Just tell him to not use analogies and be quiet. Why would you try to compare it to some random idiot story? Can't you speak without swearing? There is no need to make up some even dumber analogy that is supposed to point out the fallacious logic in the GPs post. You only serve to bring a bad name to all Anonymous Cowards.
If I have a monkey.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
The latest version has been released as a free product licensed under the GPL, not without some controversy.
No because he needs the point well beaten into his brain for it to do any good.
And you think I give anonymous cowards a bad name? Are you serious? Compared to the shit some people spew. All I did was to knock some of the stuffing out of a single nerdlinger, and quite possibly bring happiness to many others.
And you shut the hell up about monkeys monkey boy.
Are you sure you need a "database"? Can't your store your data in a text file? Or a few text files? Maybe an XML file if you've got a lot of data? Or maybe serialize your objects (i.e., write them all to disk)?
A lot of people here keep suggesting RDBMSs and SQL this and SQL that. I've been using relational databases professionally for about ten years. They are certainly powerful, but I think they're overkill for most applications.
My advice is to start with a flat file, and when your app demands something more, go to a few files. When your app demands even more, think about serialization or XML or something. If you need more power, then go to something like Berkeley DB or some other simple DB. Only when you really really really need something complex should you consider a RDBMS.
I think what the person who wrote this question is looking for what I would call an End User Database program; programs like FileMaker Pro, dBase, or Access. Client/Server setups like MySQL and PostgreSQL are nice but when all I want to keep an inventory of my comics and CDs, they are overkill and too complicated.
Oh and for the benefit of your impaired brain, and any other half wits who read this, my dumber analogy wasn't to point out any failing of the logic of the post in question. There was no incorrect logic in it, just an idiotic analogy which I was ridiculing.
The analogy wasn't actually one of the worst out there, just the straw that broke the camel's back. There are countless idiots out there typing things about how different CPUs are like cars and trucks and how different operating systems are like this and that, and jesus just cut the crap and stop confusing the matter for crying out loud.
having in my earlier days done dbase programming (and then foxpro, before it became part of the Behemoth) i can say that i haven't seen one yet.
i think about the closest i've seen, as stated above, is using Access as a front end.
Access is still too complicated for most untrained users, but it's the best solution in terms of maintaining database quality. you can use excel, but kiss the data quality goodbye...
i'll run through dselect tonight, and see if i see something that's similar.
in some ways, i miss dbase. it was nice and simple, yet could do most all i needed to do relationally. would i go back? not on your life.
i wonder who owns all that old dbase code? strikes me as it wouldn't be outrageously difficult to get it to use mysql, as long as it wasn't coded in assembly.
stored on computers from birth to the grave
with an understanding of only the rudiments of python, you can do a lot pretty easily with the 'anydbm' module. there is nice get-you-started tutorial in the book 'programming python' by mark lutz.
If you're using PostgreSQL, Gedafe is a very nice automatic web frontend generator. Just define your tables, views, constraints, etc. for validation and such, and it takes care of the rest. Give it a try, it's really good.
- Sw Usr
they knew how to use the VC++ Resource Editor to create dialogs but didn't feel comfortable writing C++ code
And what's wrong with that? There's a perfectly viable alternative for those people: VB. They may not be CS majors, but that doesn't mean they should have to contract a programmer if they want to write a silly little program for something or other. The hard part of most userland programs is the UI, not the code.
Some people don't care about database normal forms and other shit that doesn't *really* matter when it comes to simply getting the job done.
Random and weird software I've written.
It took me about half an hour to learn enough SQL to do basic stuff. It isn't that hard.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I am biased toward PostgreSQL - it offers the true robustness of a real enterprise-level DB - I have no doubt that one day it will beat Oracle at their own game. MySQL is OK for learning on, but I wouldn't use it in any critical application (ie, I wouldn't reccommend it for use in a business environment).
So, install one or the other, fire up psql (or MySQL's equivalent), and start playing with SQL.
A good book to get started with would be O'Reilly's "SQL in a Nutshell" - it will give you the background on SQL and RDBMS theory, and then layout the syntax and use of various SQL for the four major DBMS (MSSQL, Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL), as well as standard SQL (SQL99?). It is probably one of the best books out there.
Sure, it isn't drag-and-drop/clicky like MS Access, etc - yeah, you gotta type. But you will learn a lot, and may even unlearn some bad things you thought were right and correct before (ie, good normalization practices, the need and use for primary keys, etc)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
How about the "Access-Killer" Rekall from TheKompany?
http://www.thekompany.com/products/rekall/
"Rekall is a database front-end. It is not itself a database -- data is stored somewhere else, in an SQL server, and Rekall is fundamentally just a tool to extract, display and update that data (of course, it does lots more than that, it does forms and reports and scripting and so on). It is database agnostic, and does not have any preferred database in the sense that Access(R) uses the Jet(R) database engine. "
For your MySQL needs, what's wrong with phpMyAdmin? It's pretty straightforward, and within half an hour of pulling out some SQL documentation and glancing at how the interface worked, I was fine.
Cue The Sun...
It's no help if you're looking for a UI, though you could always use the API to make simple utils for creating tables & such.
Or, for that matter, create/maintain your tables & indexes in DOS/Windows using dBase/FoxPro/etc. and copy them wherever your app needs to go.
minq.se
Free (you need to registers), commercial version available($99 i guess).
Ok, this is not really an end-user tool, but an absolutely great DB Frontend. Written in Java, runs on many platforms, very nicely designed and quick.
Java has very solid database drivers these days, as Java (like it or not) has become the main middleware and server-side programming language.
Note to all those java haters out there: try it, you'll like it!
Check out FileMaker Pro if you want an easy to use, cross platform and relatively powerful database that I think will do exactly what you want...
It runs on Linux & Mac OS X - so there's your Unix compatibility (it also runs on Windows and Mac OS 9). You can have a database on one machine hosted to other machines over the LAN quite easily, and the power of it is in the simplicity of defining fields and layouts - it's all a GUI based draw, drag and drop interface.
It's a lot more like the old skool databases where you draw a form, fill in the fields and then there's your database, rather than all this new-fangled SQL select * from blah where whatever kind of syntax =)
It is 100% closed source, and you have to pay for it, so two thirds of the people here will immediately dismiss it, but you can download a free trial and see if it does what you want.
-k
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
The company I had previously worked for, we did a fair amount of "easy and basic" database manipulation. We had used the Informix db on our servers at our various sites, and it had a very easy to use text-based (possibly curses, is my guess) front-end. I don't remember the front-end having any other names, and I don't personally use informix, so I don't know if the front-end ships standard with informix or not?
I can't say the front-end was the most powerful thing in the world, but for our needs, it got everything done for us. . . After doing a little snooping around with it, it seems like it has a lot of functions that any basic - mid level user would need in order to manipulate a database.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
It's available from GNU, it can be used with C programs, Perl scripts, PHP, Python, etc. It's databasing at its simplest. I use it myself. It works well.
Sybase has a database application programming system called PowerBuilder. It uses compiled programs, datawindows and relies heavily on SQL scripting. Although I'm not very fond of the application programming part of the system, I do like the simple SQL editor that is included with it. It can connect to all databases (with plugins) and ODBC sources. Features a very nice 'white blank page' SQL editor screen that highlights key SQL keywords (a bit like the IDE of VisualBasic) and offers very easy data viewing and manipulation.
I tried products like TOAD and Aqua Data Studio, but found these to be very restrictive and a lot more difficult for easy queries and result editing. I do not recommend it here for you, but is there anybody out there that knows about an SQL editor that can connect to all these databases and is as simple, yet more powerfull than PowerBuilder? (And features Unicode support :-) ?)
I know this is a little late, but it is exactly what you asked for. Visual Foxpro is the descendent of Foxpro, a Dbase3 /Clipper clone. It runs quite well under Wine without much setup. Note that that VFP5 & VFP 6 are not anti-licensed like the later versions (restricted by MS from being used on Linux). I use VFP5 all the time under WINE. There are articles on the web on how to make VFP run under wine. Obviously, the apps will run under MS & Linux & if you have the right compilers, Macs.
Gaby.
. ...) while keeping
I don't know where to get it, other than apt-get install gaby. It's a VERY light database-type thing without an actual database. It's perfect for organizing small amounts of relatively simple information, like a comic book collection, or names and addresses.
What's more, it's GUI and can be installed easily right now. No need for any learning at all.
It's way, way too simple for most uses, but this guy doesn't want a relational database, he wants a laymans Database, which s just the storage of data. And gaby does that perfectly.
From the control file description:
Gaby is a _small_ personal databases manager for Linux
using GTK+ and Gnome for its GUI.
It was designed to provide straight-forward access to databases
a 'normal' user would like (addresses, books,
the ability to easily create databases for other needs. On a
technical side it was designed with extensibility in mind and
thus use relies a lot on plug-ins.
I want my Cowboyneal
I have been writing a tool to address this issue, even though most DBA's will not use GUI's more than just DBA's need to interact with the database as well.
I have written an application called iSQL-Viewer The basic premisie is to take advantage of Java and JDBC. At this point there is nothing platform specific in the application and it is mainly designed with developers in mind to easily view and load data in a given database.
I have used it against Sybase, MSSQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL and it has been known to work on various other platforms including SQLite, and Informix
</self-promotion>
There are countless idiots out there typing things about how different CPUs are like cars and trucks and how different operating systems are like this and that, and jesus just cut the crap and stop confusing the matter for crying out loud.
We make such statements because we're used to idiots who require us to over-simplify it into dumb-nitwit terms in order to grasp tech talk.
My mother for instance, doesn't understand tech terms, so I simplify tech talk into talk she can understand
Maybe if the world was all nerdy then we wouldn't be having this discussion now -- would we?
There's an excellent program called Servoy (www.servoy.com) that is a zero deployment client based Java. The form development is very similar to MS Access and uses Javascript as it's scripting language.
Since Servoy is build using Java it can run on any OS with Java support (1.3 and above).
You can download a free (limited number of connections) copy of the server and development environment.
Try it, I've been very happy with it.
An exploration of mixology, spirits and bartending.
What about Berkeley DB? Sleepycat makes a simple "database" that sounds exactly like what the poster is looking for in a database.
~~ What's stopping you?
It does do forms, reports and a few more things.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
The person asking the question just wants a simple GUI for a non-engineer to use to build a database. Like, say, FileMaker.
Yes, every database _should_ be designed by someone who really understands database design. But most databases in the real world are running in FileMaker and Access, created by non-engineers in order to keep track of relatively simple information. For example, a call log, or a list of donations to a school, or an inventory at a bookstore. These systems don't need to scale, they just need to be good enough to let people do their jobs. And since they don't _have_ an engineer to do a proper requirements documentation, normalize the design, etc., the options are either (1) a simple GUI tool, and (2) no database.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
A simple database that works REALLY well?
Nutshell Plus, a/k/a Ultra Plus:
http://www.fairsoft.com/
I'm a big PostgreSQL fan, but when it came time to do a big project, I ended up with SQLite (and I'm very happy I did).
Basically, the problem was to take a bunch of huge text files, parse them into a set of inputs for a big simulator written in ANSI C, run the simulation, save the results, and postprocess them.
I wrote the parsing in a mixture of Python and SQL (using PySQLite), had the simulator write the results back out the the SQLite database (which was amazingly easy and bug-free), and then did postprocessing again in Python and SQL.
It was WAY easier than my previous attempts to do similar things using embedded Python and/or PostgreSQL. I still love PostgreSQL, but not for this project.
Many of the replies to this post make my head throb. Why? I've got a similar requirement and have been searching for the solution, and am praying for some kind soul to share a solution with us. Instead, there is a bunch of people with answers that avoid (evade?) the poster's request.
In the olden days, I could use a user-friendly cheap commercial product to drop a small app on the desk of a non-techie who could do REAL WORK with MINIMAL subsequent support required from me.
The user friendly cheap commercial product?: Mostly Q&A, PFSfile, AlphaFour, and FileMaker Pro.
What did a typical app include?:
- a data entry form with field level validation and external table lookups on every field, including drop-down menus.
- If/then/else logic based on field entries for data manipulation and jumping to other form fields
- a couple of dozen canned queries with totals and sub totals, counts, averages, min and max values
- Indexing of any or all fields
- Tables could hold 100,000 records with fast searching and report generation
- Importing of dBase, spreadsheet, column-delimited or tab-delimited data files, including field and record-level error checking.
- Intelligent handling of a kazillion date formats and date logic
- Most of the field-types found today in MS-Access including MEMO
- Both record (form) and table (similar to spreadsheet) views
- Password protection
- trigger-type updating to external tables
- trigger-type lookups from external tables
- Custom menus
Now here is the kicker (listen closely campers): Absolutely everything in the application could be MAINTAINED or ENHANCED by BTEUs (BARELY-TECHNICAL-END-USERS).
In other words, with a single one-hour class, I could teach darn near anyone to use the app. EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY: with between two and four hour sessions, I could teach a BTEU to add fields, logic, reports, ad hoc extracts, and lookup tables.
Today, I have PHP and MYSQL for the small apps my team creates for our BTEUs. What w need is a Q&A-type front-end to MYSQL so give to users so they can do EVERYTHING in the list three paragraphs above.
Don't worry about the apps getting too big or too complex. 99% will have less than 10 tables of less than 10,000 records per table. The 1% of applications whose requirements balloon into ten of millions of records we re-write from scratch in Perl/Oracle or PHP/Perl/Oracle or ColdFusion/Perl/Oracle anyway.
Today, MS-Access enables the BTEU to quickly get in trouble and generate support calls that exceed number of intelligent support hours available in the universe across all dimensions from now until eternity. Most "friendlier" approaches are too complex to enable the BTEU to do their own application maintenance.
Based on the comments thus far, I will be researching:
- http://www.fabforce.net/ -- http://www.fabforce.net/dbdesigner4/ - http://www.mysql.com/products/mysqlcc/index.html - pgaccess - http://www.rekallrevealed.org/ - http://www.totalrekall.co.uk for pre-compiled binaries - http://www.rekallrevealed.org for the sources
I pray for some words-of-wisdom. Not let-it-be.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.