Re: absolute novice wanting knowledgeable opinion about front end

There is another product people have been talking about that is a possible replacement for Access. I think its a commercial product. Can't remember what the name of it is. If it comes to me I'll let you know.

OpenOffice OOBase, has some nice features like the relational design window, basic reports, a knockoff of visual basic for doing macro functions, but it still needs a little bit more work to compete with MS Access advanced features. I would say in a year or so I would start thinking about it seriously as an alternative for high-end MS Access apps as well. For simple apps, I think it works fine as a front end to PostgreSQL.

I basically use it as an ADP (Access project) for postgresql since it connects in much the same way as MS Access projects connect to SQL Server.

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil [mailto:philbaseless-postgres(at)yahoo(dot)com]
Sent: Tue 9/30/2008 7:51 PM
To: Obe, Regina; Tom Lane
Cc: pgsql-novice(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [NOVICE] 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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