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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: KDatabase for KOffice
From:       Shawn Gordon <shawn-gordon () home ! com>
Date:       2001-11-01 1:13:33
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The only thing I'm aware of that is really doing what you want is a product 
from my company (theKompany) - sorry for the plug, but people constantly 
ask for this.  In any case you can check out 
www.thekompany.com/products/rekall for details and 
www.sf.net/projects/rekall for a download.

Being part of KOffice doesn't really make sense other than as being bundled 
with the office suite, which does make sense, but there isn't a lot you can 
do to take advantage of the embedding I don't think.

Now I've heard Faure say that KWord will never have scripting, this makes 
things like mail merge a bit difficult, and that was always my dream to 
implement in KOffice, so we are going to be implementing it as part of 
HancomOffice instead (www.hancom.com/en).

Rekall comes with a default xBase style database, but you can easily use 
MySQL and PostgreSQL if you wish as well as some other databases that are 
coming along.

We've spent time with QtSQL and if you think that making something like 
Rekall with it under Qt3 and KDE3 is going to be a piece of cake, you are 
going to be disappointed as we were.  We tried to use it, but there are far 
too many limitations in it for this type of application at the moment, 
however it will certainly have other uses outside of this.

Shawn

At 08:33 AM 10/31/2001, Dave Bailey wrote:
>Hey guys,
>
>I  and my compadres work with technology in a lot of schools up and down the
>eastern coastal area. (Mostly in the Carolinas.)
>
>There is a LOT of interest in moving away from Microsoft Works or Microsoft
>Office- especially since Microsoft has been getting far expensive with their
>new licenses.
>
>The one obstacle? The computer skills tests in most districts I work with
>require a database.
>
>Currently, Linux has lots of database backends, but not many easy database
>front-ends.
>
>I would love to see something simple, like a database frontend based on
>FileMaker or even just Microsoft Works database module.
>
>Access is a bit of a disaster for schools, so most schools stick with
>Microsoft Works just because of the easy-to-use database. (IE- in a computer
>schools test, you don't want your students failing because they can't
>understand a basic computer skill due to the fact the software GUI stinks.)
>
>A basic database for KOffice would help free a lot of these school districts
>from paying HUGE sums of money to Microsoft year after year. Many of these
>school systems are strapped for cash and can't afford to purchase needed
>upgrade computer systems and networks due to software expense. (I see many
>systems still using Macintosh (not PowerMacs) and 386/486 systems.)
>
>A basic database would really help- it should probably allow for-
>
>1. A single file storage approach to saving a local database.
>2. Both form and list views of the data. The form view should have some basic
>interface element options like popup lists, checkboxes and radio buttons.
>3. Very basic report printing based on the layouts for simplicity sake.
>4. Import and export capabilities of, at least, text command and tab
>delimited files.
>5. A find/filter capability to show a sub-set of all the records based on
>search criteria.
>6. Wysiwyg layout creation.
>7. multiple field sorting capability
>
>Some other features that would be nice, but not at all required-
>
>1. spell checking.
>2. integration with KWord for things like automating mail merges
>3. a simple scripting language to automate certain tasks.
>
>What do you think. Have you discussed any of this? I've looked around for
>this solution and found *nothing*. Plenty of power databases, but no
>easy-to-use ones.
>
>Thanks for listening-
>
>Dave Bailey
>Senior Network Engineer
>Data Networks
>dbailey@dnetworks.com

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