[ubuntu-uk] OOO Base vs MS Access

[Nigel Verity]

Hi Folks

I was interested to read Glen Mehn's comments about OOO Base; effectively, brilliant but who uses it?

I used to be an MS Access developer and was quite a big fan. Now I've moved over to Linux I've been experimenting with just what can be done with Base, to see if it is a good open source substitute.

My conclusion is that it CAN be used to develop sophisticated applications, but you have to do a hell of a lot more work compared with Access.

If you stick to bound forms and controls for your UI, then Access is far far better, as so much can be achieved with properties rather than coding. Yes, Base does have this capability, but the number of properties is so much smaller. Also, the Access forms look much better too. However, if you use Base dialogs instead of bound forms as your UI then you can create an attractive UI and provide some sophisticated functionality, but you have to be prepared to write all the code to retrieve data from the database, write it to the controls and, correspondingly, manage all the database updates explicitly. This does, though, give you complete control over everything, which isn't always so easy with Access as it auto-updates records when you might not really want it to.

Wrting code in OOO Basic is not that unlike writing in C++ using Visual Studio, albeit with Basic syntax. You have to associate code with control events yourself. In VBA that's all done for you. There's no doubt that coding with Access/VBA is much easier and more productive than developing for OOO Base. However, in time you build up code libraries which you can re-use and save yourself a load of time in later projects.

The one thing I really miss from Access, which is not available in OOO Base, is the multi-column list box. You can simulate this to some extent by using fixed fonts and clever string formatting but it looks like what it is - a workaround.

The ability of Base to link to so many types of database is brilliant, and provides a big advantage over Access.

In a multi-user environment, Access can be very restrictive. Unless you start doing clever things at the server end, such as run stored procedures instead of client-end queries, Access is very heavy on network resources.

Overall I think that OOO Base is going in the right direction, but it still has a way to go before it could get anywhere close to challenging Access. However, if something can be done to improve the appearance of forms and make coding easier, there is definitely a lot of potential.

Regards

Nige
 		 	   		  
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