[KLUG Members] openoffice and mysql

[Mike Williams]

I have a project (that I can't really call a small project anymore) of
20-30 tables in mysql.  The tables are quite small in database terms,
rarely more than 100 records, but there are lots of relationships
between them.  I can specify the relationship in each SELECT statement
(SELECT <something> WHERE <table1.linked_field_1> =
<table2.linked+field_2> or whatever. If I try to globally define that
relationship in the OpenOffice database, it reports that relationships
are not available with external tables.  I googled for it and it has
something to do with the ODBC and JDBC protocols that connect OO and
mysql.  This is going to be very unpleasant to do if I have to specify
the relationships in every query, form, and subform where I use them so,
I need another option.

Should I just copy the tables to an internal OpenOffice database (and if
so, how do you do that)?  This would probably be OK since I don't expect
this thing to be multi-user, but I thought storing it on a server would
give me ore options down the road.  Can relationships between tables be
defined in mysql on the server side?  Do I have to teach myself Ruby on
Rails, and how hard is that for somebody who's not much of a programmer?