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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Article about OOo/KOffice/OASIS database
From:       Jarosław Staniek <js () iidea ! pl>
Date:       2004-07-09 10:50:03
Message-ID: 40EE8682.2070401 () iidea ! pl
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 > The original problem was one of file-exchange. It seems unlikely that we can
 > get Microsoft to change the the native file format, and there will also be
 > resistance to changing OO.o. So if we really want to exchange files it
 > probably won't be native to everyone.
 >
 > I think that there are really two options - a vendor neutral format, or
 > accepting MDB as a de-facto standard.
 >
 > I guess that there are some vendor neutral database standards (eg from ISO),
 > but I doublt there are any that are really going to be suitable for
 > applications like Kexi.

I doubt too, there are features in Kexi that can be considered as "extensions" 
  and these couldn't had been done in early 1990's (times for almost 90% of 
MSA design).

 > That leaves us with MDB, almost certainly via mdbtools or some fork. The only
 > political issue is whether we want to divide the market, and try to stop
 > people using Access. I understand why people might want to do that, but I see
 > it is better to let people access there data in any way they choose.

I assume you mean entire MDB format, not only resusing tables schema and data.
After a research, being ex-MSA user, I can tell that sticking with MDB fiels 
as de-facto standard can be a dead-end. That's why:

- dependency hell: we'd only add features that MSA offers. Example1: who would 
want to remap paths to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Shared\ to be COMPATIBLE ? 
:) Example2: really many vertical apps build on top of MS Office uses 
so-called automation (weird win32 version of DCOP) and eg. depends on 
streaming data from MSA to MSExcel -- this _can't_ be impelmented portable in 
a clean way.

- incompatibility from version- to-version. Remember what was with MSA 2000? 
Many people still are using unsupported MSA 97 because of incompatibilities. 
Our project's vitality can't be cut down with this issue.

- patents (oh now, should we forget about USA users until they will have 
reasonable patent law?)

We've got MDB tools in our TODO-REUSE list. Reusing it we plan to offer import 
schemas (and some export, mostly data) betwee MSA-Jet and KexiDB.

IMHO. This one and similar decisions can be really helpfull in attracting 
users of other OSes to Linux/KDE.

-- 
regards / pozdrawiam,
   Jaroslaw Staniek / OpenOffice Polska
   Kexi project: http://koffice.org/kexi/ http://www.kexi-project.org/
   Qt-KDE Wrapper project: http://iidea.pl/~js/qkw/
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