[libreoffice-users] Re: Tell me it's not true

Am 29.02.2012 18:15, Dan Lewis wrote:
> This thread for the most part is exactly what should not be part of
> this mailing list.

@Mark Stanton,
Would you please visit us at 
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php next time?

>       What would most people who are new to Base think after reading the
> negative comments about Base? Statements about how hard it is to learn
> (comparing learning at least some of it to the difficulty of learning a
> new language). No one seems to be able to give references that would
> help. (No one has so far.)

You should read what people think after trying to work with Base in a 
user interface that suggests something very similar to MS Access. 
Everybody working through the ungrateful topics of Base support has to 
put things straight regarding what Base is and what it's not.

Drew Jensen is the single person who deserves all merits that some 
people (including me) found their way to do very productive things with 
this office suite's database connectivity.

Actually it is easy enough to access arbitrary table data beyond file 
format issues in order to make them appear in our office documents (once 
you got used to the fact that in most cases a "database document" may 
not contain any database). Slightly advanced users can prepare data 
sources and queries that are easy to use by the less capable users. Your 
letter template may use some Name-Address-ZIP-City query from a MySQL 
server and then you advise the end user to use another 
Name-Address-ZIP-City query from a plain text file you created this 
morning. The end user does not notice any difference between MySQL 
server and plain text when he reconnects his letter to another data 
source item.

Building a simple database application with data flowing from the office 
suite back to some connected database takes a conception of the database 
you are going to write to. This expert knowledge is beyond the scope of 
most users and it has nothing to do with ODF documents. It takes 
extremely complex tools to assist laymen in this effort. Even the 
expensive database suites can not do that much when you are not aware of 
some theoretical concepts.

First you have a relational database ready to use, then building some 
ODF input forms to edit the relational data is no black art. The minimum 
tools are availlable in Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress. They are very 
simple and "simple" is not the same as "easy". The design process 
involves user-ability rather than usability.

The resulting forms, reports and mail merge templates work very well for 
"my users" and me. "My users" refers to a group of rather computer 
illiterate professionals who need to write lots of info snippets into 
protocols, memos, inventories and serial letters collecting some 100 
records per day in a small business network of 6 personal computers.

If LibreOffice would drop 90% of "Base", keeping the mere connectivity, 
the primitive query parser and ODF forms, we could still work with it in 
the same way as we do today. All the convenient but misleading rubbish 
built around the core functionality is obsolete.
Base should start again where OOo 2.0 left the well thought concept of 
OOo 1.x.
Wrapping portable databases in extensions rather than documents would 
solve all the data loss problems of the embedded database.
Reduce to the max!


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