[ubuntu-uk] (Slightly OT) Standalone databases

[Simon Greenwood]

On 20 October 2011 08:29, Bob Giles <thecorfiot at gmail.com> wrote:

> **
> Hi listers,
>
> Firstly, I read on a tweet today that it's Ubuntu's 7th birthday today.
> Happy birthday Ubuntu!
>
> Now for the real reason for the post.
>
> I want to create a simple database that I can distribute to others and was
> hoping to come up with a solution that just allowed me to distribute it as a
> standalone package in much the same way that MS users can with Access. I
> want it to run under linux. If it was cross platform, that would be even
> better but not essential.
>
> I do not want to be in the position of saying that you have to have a given
> package installed to run the database. For example, I could easily produce
> what I want in LibreOffice Base but would then have to assume that
> recipients run LibreOffice.
>
> I have googled and the only programs that appear to come close are Kexi and
> Firebird. Does anyone have any experiences of either or recommendations for
> other packages.
>
> I have played about with Kexi which runs under KDE desktop but it appears
> to crash with boring regularity. (That could be because I favour the Gnome
> desktop.)
>
> As I said, the proposed database is simple and does not necessarily have to
> be relational although it will contain many records. I want to keep records
> of magazine articles from a variety of publications but can't find a bespoke
> package that fits what I want to do.
>
>
To be Ubuntuesque I have to point a desktopcouch, which is at the core of
Gnome, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to port to other platforms.
There are Windows and Mac projects but I have no idea how mature they are.

If users don't need to directly access the database then look at SQLite,
which is cross-platform, included with most Linux distributions and easy to
bundle. It's used in Firefox among other things, and there is a plugin for
Firefox if direct access is required.

Next up from that is something like HSQLDB, which is the engine in
OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice which is written in Java and can be plugged into
a package as part of a distribution. Downside there is that it needs Java to
be present.

s/


-- 
Twitter: @sfgreenwood
"post-apocalyptic allen keys"
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-uk/attachments/20111020/5564a043/attachment.html>