Re: [libreoffice-design] Agenda for the design/UX meeting 2019-Feb-06 (Wed)

I am completely ignorant about development, but what I know is that
Microsoft Access has a proprietary database engine which can be used to
develop database applications, and is definitely not VBA or any other
flavour of BASIC (although Access can use VBA). These databases are not
easy to manage with Base, and in any case people used to Access expect
Base to be similar to Access.

The fact that many users rely on Excel/Calc for databases is another
story, but in that case interoperability is not a major issue. In these
cases we try to educate people to move to a real DBMS but this is often
difficult because of the sheer incompetence of people, who do not know
the difference between a table and a database.

Of course, Microsoft is not doing anything to educate people, because
they prosper on ignorance.

Best regards, Italo

On 11/02/2019 02:21, Gerhard Weydt wrote:

> What do you mean when saying Base "is missing the scripting feature"?
> Surely you can use macros in Base, as well as in other components of
> LibreOffice. These macros can be written in Baisc, which I have often
> used, or in some other languages, which I haven't tried myself. And
> without these surely a database application generally would be very
> "raw", confined to the basic actions. The work that Base or the the
> database does is essential for the whole business, and without it
> nothing would work, but the checks and actions done by the additional
> programming (using macros or even some sophisticated functions of the
> database system) are the points that end users can value. They decide
> about a system being accepted.
> Now much can be done using Basic macros, which is quite easy. Using them
> really is adding the salt to the dish. There may be some cases where
> Basic is too slow, because it is interpreting the code. Then you can use
> other scripting languages, which I haven't done, but other people speak
> of it.
> But there may be a big problem for people used to Access: as far as I
> understand, macros used in Access cannot be simply transferred to
> LibreOffice, because the Basic dialects are not completely compatible. I
> have never had to do with these problems, so I cannot say more, but I
> fear that this may be the cause for some people to reject trying
> LibreOffice. Which is a shame because looking at a problem from a new
> angle is in many cases very helpful.
> As regards Excel instead of Access or Calc instead of Base: that seems
> to be a general problem, the practically endless table of Calc/Excel
> provides the basic features most needed at first sight , without any
> effort for definition of structures; the difficulties creep in later,
> and the users try for a very long time to mend the problems, instead of
> rethinking the situation. This is a general problem, not concerned only
> with LibreOffice.
> I can only offer my opinion that in many cases the use of Excel (or
> Calc) is second best and due to a neglect of deeper investigation, which
> would have yielded a database solution, but how can we change that?



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