Re: absolute novice wanting knowledgeable opinion about front end

Regina, thanks for help.

What I mean to say about mixing the Front and Back was regarding OperSys.

Access and the JetDB suits my databases fine and we don't have more than one
user at a time and other reasons why it is working for us. But I'm always
looking at the possiblitiy of moving away from MS. Without a suitable
replacement for Access I can't even look into openoffice for example. But since
it's been a few years since I did my last research on this, things have
advanced. Mysql wasn't even a relational Db before and now even they seem to be
improving past access2000. OpenOffice has a DB called Base. And I would guess
it could be a front end to look at for Postgres.

Anyway, as I have time to look further I'll stay in touch.

thanks for the info.

Phil

> Phil,
>
> PostgreSQL is a server side database, so not quite clear what you
> mean by not mixing front with back. Regardless of what you choose
> for your front-end, its not going to be completely tied to
> PostgreSQL.
>
> It might be a good stepping stone to stick with your Access front end
> and just switch all your tables to linked PostgreSQL tables
> especially if you have a lot of time invested in writing Access
> functions.
>
> For the most part you can use all the functions you have written in
> MS Access if you stick with Linked Tables. If you use pass-thrus or
> postgresql views then you can take advantage of PostgreSQL specific
> functionality. You can mix and match all 3 strategies (linked tables,
> linked views, sql pass-thru) in the same MS Access database.
>
> On top of that you inherit PostgreSQL ACID, cascade update/delete,
> network efficiency (e..g passing statements along the pipe instead of
> index reads) security stuff even with linked tables. We have a bunch
> of applications we have written that use PostgreSQL as a backend and
> MS Access as a front-end. And also a bunch that use SQL Server as
> back end and MS Access as front-end. They actually work well
> together and don't suffer from the network issues that a pure MS
> Access solution does (e.g. 15 clients, slow over slow network etc) .
>
>
> Thanks,
> Regina
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phil [mailto:philbaseless-postgres(at)yahoo(dot)com]
> Sent: Sun 9/28/2008 11:42 PM
> To: Obe, Regina; Tom Lane
> Cc: pgsql-novice(at)postgresql(dot)org
> Subject: Re: [NOVICE] absolute novice wanting knowledgeable opinion
> about front end
>
> This was interesting and the comments in the article about Access's
> ease of use
> being a bain or boon is appropriate. But it made it easy toy to
> target ourselves
> and not have to muck thru a generic db app.
>
> I'm not planning to mix front and back end's.
>
> So far I found report generators and sql builders. Form builders
> will be more
> difficult to find. The ones in MSaccess integrate a lot of their GUI
> app
> features and are very powerful. For example columns can be greyed out
> or not
> depending on content. The forms in Access are often used to make up
> for it's
> lack of data security that would probably be handled by postgres's
> ACID
> compliance. I need to educate myself on ACID compliance and other
> SQL that is
> new and improved over Msaccess spec.
>
> I see I would have to rewrite a lot of Access functions also.
>
> What would be nice is if someone had a sample DB and frontend that
> mimic's
> Access's 'Northwind traders' sample.
>
> Anyway thanks for the replies from everyone.
>
>
>>> (Anyone want to start putting together a page on wiki.postgresql.org
>>> about Access compatibility?)
>>
>>> regards, tom lane
>>
>> If it helps we wrote a quick one. I think its already listed on the
>> wiki too.
>>
>> http://www.postgresonline.com/journal/index.php?/archives/24-Using-MS-Access-with-PostgreSQL.html
>>
>> Hope that helps,
>> Regina
>>
>>
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