Hello friends.
The purpose of this note is to provide some feedback on the above document - largely negative, I'm afraid.
First, let me outline my own background. Retired IT consultant - I remember working with punch cards. My more recent experience has been with MS Access and more particularly, FileMaker Pro.
I'm far from being an Access expert; in particular, my knowledge of SQL is rather sketchy. Filemaker does not use SQL.
Having decided to use LibreOffice for word processing, I decided to learn LibreOffice Base. Looking for a new experience, I decided to go through the Getting Started document rather than trying to design a DB first. I have now reverted to my normal mode.
Compliments.
Sections 1 and 2 (Tables and Forms) are excellent. Naturally, I am familiar with the concepts covered but still I thought the general explanations were quite good. (It's always easy to complain about dropping short of perfection so I've restrained my pickiness. However, modifying field names at this stage is bad enough but making changes which remove the purpose of the field are just plain stupid.)
Criticisms.
Section 3 (Queries) was, initially, a bit of a struggle for me. Suddenly, field names, table names and query names have new names! I managed to decipher what was now meant but I wonder how a totally inexperienced body would get on. Setting up the first query sort of makes sense. The main query sort of makes sense. However, in general, this section is one of the worst introductory explanations of anything that I've ever seen. Up to this point, I was happy to wear the really odd sample DB. Now its weirdness starts to matter. Nowhere is the purpose of the data explained and, for the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would be recording the living expenses for each day on a vacation. Even stranger is having 2 people paying for fuel.
Now we get to the instructions re the new main query. There is no explanation of what the various non-field columns actually mean. Anyway, I went ahead and completed the query. Result? An SQL error message about wrong data type. Just what a beginner needs! (I've had experience with many programming languages, from Assembler to COBOL to APL to Basic to C++ to waterfront, and SQL is, without a doubt, the worst.) I double/triple/quadruple checked my data and my definitions; AOK. I re-entered the data to try and match the sample data. Still no joy. As I tried to ignore this and look ahead, I discover a new field has been added to the initial basic query! At this point, I decided to cut my losses and have a look at the final section, Reports.
Wow! Within a few minutes. I've created a really useless report - no headings, footings, etc. Not to worry, we have a list of things you might like to add. Now how do we add headings? Go look somewhere else! Great! Really useful information.
My experience has been that, after the basic structure, the most difficult area of any programming language/package is creating reports. In general, I would expect the section on Reports to be as large as, possibly larger than, that on Queries.
I have two theories about the reason for this total shambles.
1. TeamA wrote a really detailed 'Getting Started' but didn't get past Queries. TeamB started to finish it without looking at the first two sections and then ran out of time and had to skimp on the Reports section.
2. TeamA wrote the whole thing but TeamC saw it and decided it was such a mess it needed a re-write. They didn't get past the first two sections.
3. Some combination of 1 and 2.
When I am confident enough with both Base and Writer, I'll be happy to volunteer my services to have a go at fixing the document grizzled about above. Hopefully, someone better qualified than I am will beat me to it.
Kind regards,
Paul Jeremy