On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:34:39 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> Oracle is a nice product, but if you just want to store your phonebook
>>> or your CD collection, it's way way overkill. I will say one thing
>>> about MS Access: It may be an utterly crap DB engine, but if all you
>>> want to do is store and lookup a little bit of data, it's the most
>>> lightweight thing I've seen. You get the DB engine and a nice
>>> front-end and a design tool, all in one. It's not very *good*, but for
>>> small things it's right-sized.
>> 
>> Well, yeah - I'd be more inclined to use MySQL, but some apps on Linux
>> to do things like tracking a CD collection use SQLite on the backend
>> (heck, my newsreader uses it).
> 
> Sure. But you'd have to have MySQL installed, then you'd have to create
> a folder to put the files in, then execute several dozen raw SQL
> commands to manually build the database, create the log files, build the
> tables, then you'd have to configure the access controls, and then you
> can configure Base to talk to it.

Um, no, generally the app will list mysql as a requirement, but then will 
script the building of the database.  Or if it's SQLite, then it's pre-
created by the application.  Running Linux applications isn't as complex 
as you seem to think it is.

And as for the database creation, I tend to use something like Webmin or 
MySQLAdmin (a PHP interface) which simplifies things.  But I'm also 
comfortable using the mysql command-line client as well.

> In MS Access, you click "file > new", select a filename, and you're
> done. See what I mean?
> 
> Of course, MySQL (and other DB engines) can do all sorts of other fancy
> stuff that MS Access will never manage. (*cough* file security,
> anybody?) But for simple things, it's much quicker.

I'm not arguing that.

Though actually oobase does have it's own database format that's as easy 
to use as MS Access (I hadn't actually looked at it because I don't use 
it that often).

Jim

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