On Sun, Jan 03, 1999 at 10:54:32AM -0816, David E. Fox really opened up and said:
: > Have you looked at StarOffice. It has a M$Access clone as part of the package. I
:
: Well I have and even have used :) SO 5.0 here and although the database
: is more or less there, it doesn't seem to be much more than a simple
: flat-file addressbook model. Access, on the other hand, is relatively
: powerful, though not in the same class as Oracle, Informix, etc.
:
: Although PostgreSQL and the other offerings are valuable and
: powerful, it's rather difficult on the typing fingers to type in
: things like 'insert into phonebook values ('......') everytime you
: want to add a new record (most of the query tools I've seen don't
: even have readline capability built in, either). And to have to
: write software to get a desired interface is beyond many people.
:
: Although databasing with Web forms and so forth seems to be the
: way things are progressing, it would be nice to just have a
: simplified (although still able to have a powerful enough
: backend) method for designing, data entry & retrieval of
: the data. Paradox and/or Q&A come to mind in the DOS
: arena, and I haven't seen anything close as of yet.
One other option that I know about, though it certainly won't be an
option for everyone.
Apparently there isn't much available in the way of a database that
uses flat files, the way that XBase programs did/do. It seems most of
the databases are really SQL servers. On the very low end there are
DBM files, but I guess they can't really fill the middle ground.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, M$ made a version of FoxPro
for Unix. This is still available, and the reports I've heard indicate
that it does run under Linux with the iBCS stuff installed. The
performance was said to be good: queries/table access is at least as
fast as under the DOS versions. Interface speed wasn't so hot --
according to the reports, it seems that applications built
with it ask the system for the time of day quite a lot.
This option would give you the ability to access flat files with
millions of records with FoxPro speed. There is that 2GB file size
limit, but for many small applications this is more than enough.
The catch: they're selling it for no less than $750, the last I
checked (a couple months ago). You can find it at CDW, among other
places.
Don't ask me what makes anyone think that *any* M$ software is worth
$750.00. I sure don't know.
Anyway, hope this helps someone...
Fred
--
"The road to tyranny, we must never forget,
is the destruction of the truth." -- Bill Clinton,
15 Oct 1995 speech at the University of Connecticut
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