[KLUG Members] Open Office, database

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>I have been using Open Office at work and have found it to be almost a
>complete replacement for MS Office.  I hope to be able to recommend it to
>the big chief as a complete replacement for MS Office.
>Two areas where it is not doing the job are:
>1. Printing of envelope addresses and mailing labels
>The envelope and mailing label problem could just be that I haven't
>figured it out yet, but I have spent hours trying to get OO to work on
>these items.  This is a critical function in our organization, because we
>send out many mailings and our postal service requires that all envelopes
>be printed or we pay a surcharge on postage.  So if I can't get the
>envelope and mailing labels to work, there is no way that our organization
>could migrate to OO.  Specifically, it is very difficult to get from a
>spreadsheet with names, addresses and City/State/Zip fields to a page of
>mailing labels.  I have been able to work around the problem in a number
>of ways, but I need a feature that works well and is easy to use.  Has
>anyone had luck with this?

There are most of the Avery # sheets already defined.  Simply select one and
setup a merge document.  I've not done one from a spreadsheet, but from a
database or LDAP it works.  I assume a spreedsheet isn't much different except
defining it as a data source.

> 2. No database is included in Open Office.
>Is there an open source database program that will work together with OO
>that is relatively user friendly? 

Database? User Friendly?  Eh?

Star Office supports ODBC, either on Linux or Winbloze.  Any database (including
Access) to which you have an ODBC driver will work.

>We are working on Windows 98, 2000 and XP.

As the client, server, or both?

>I know of PostgreSql and MySQL.  

There is also a plethora of dBase work alikes as well as sqlite, sapdb, msql, etc..

>MySQL seems more of a back end database, 

MySQL is much less the "backend" database.  If we mean the same thing by
"backend" (The dark spooky place where things are automagically resolved,
sync'd, updated, etc... and users only visit in their nightmares).

But for simple end-user applications I'm certain it would work fine.

I'm a PostgreSQL man myself because constraints, stored procedures and triggers
are the BOMB!

>I need something that the average user can put together mailing
>lists or employee time logs, etc.  Hopefully with a graphical user
>interface rather than SQL code.  

You can build that in SO/OO.

>The employees are familiar with Microsoft
>Access now.  Is there a front end to one of these open source database
>programs that would allow a somewhat inexperienced user to create tables
>and enter data?  

Star Office / Open Office.  I think you already have that installed. :)

>Maybe Postgresql has something like this? 

Nope, PostgreSQL is a database.  Database developers leave UIs to the sissy
programmers.

>phpMyAdmin

gack

>might be a way to go, although it is pretty slow (over the net anyway) for
>data entry.

Nah, I'd use Open Office or Star Office.

>orry about the non-linux content, I'm working on converting OS's too, but
>that is a bigger step.

ftp://ftp.kalamazoolinux.org/pub/pdf/dbaccess.pdf