- AOOo has moved its hsqldb engine to an improved version 2, whereas LO
is still stuck on version 1.8 ;
- AOOo has removed direct support for the mysql native connector due to
licensing issues, it is still provided as a download for older versions
of OOo, but is no longer being actively supported ;
- LO no longer has any actively supported native mysql connector either,
but for the moment, an attempt to not break the existing external
extension is being maintained ;
- LO has read/write native connector support for postgresql - this, I
believe, is a major improvement over AOOo, which only had read support,
and the postgres native connector is no longer even offered with AOOo
due to licensing issues ;
- both AOOo and LO support JDBC driver connections to postgresql and
mysql databases ;
- both AOOo and LO are supposed to support ODBC driver connections -
however, this is very dependent on OS, bit version architecture (32/64)
and buggy behaviours of the 3rd party drivers ;
- LO support of MS Access databases on Windows is variable according to
LO version and Access mdb/accdb version - one day it works with one
version of LO, the next it doesn't, so your mileage may vary - I can't
speak for AOOo here as I haven't tested that bit ;
- Access databases are not supported in either LO or AOOo on other OSes
(i.e. Linux/Mac), to my knowledge - these are usually dealt with by 3rd
party programs.
This is only a short comparison, I'm sure there are other points that
could be mentioned, but on the whole, the basic DB functionality between
the two is pretty much the same. That situation is likely to change with
the switch to LO version 4 development, where it has already been
decided that backwards version (ABI) compatibility for all
functionalities of the LO suite will not be guaranteed. At the moment, I
have no idea how that will affect Base, but it will almost certainly
affect any extensions that are currently available.
Alex