[Cumbria] Database

[Jorgen Stepputat]

Thanks for the responses concerning databases.

I have encountered quite a few "blind alleys".

Yes: if you buy Star Office it comes with Adabas.  I bought Star Office p=
artly=20
because of that, and partly because Sun boasted support. I was using Mand=
rake=20
8.2 at the time. Getting Adabas to work was not easy, and Sun did not rea=
lly=20
reply to emails.  Eventually, after having written to Sun, I got a letter=
=20
with a beta manual. They admitted that the database did not work very wel=
l -=20
they described it as a challenge, partly because of poor documentation.  =
I=20
spent ages on the manual.  I was eventually able to run the program once,=
 but=20
in the process I had had to mess with configuration files, and my user=20
settings were all to pot.  I had to set up a new user, and I gave up.

Open Office provides the same front end to database, but there is no back=
 end=20
to go with it.  I found out that you were supposed to be able to use it w=
ith=20
MySQL. I duly checked that I had MySQL installed on my Mandrake 9 system =
and=20
followed carefully the instructions provided in a pdf file on=20
http://www.unixodbc.org/doc/OOoMySQL.pdf.
However, I soon got stuck. The manual tells you to check the MySQL=20
installation.  I did not know how to get out of the error message:  ERROR=
=20
2002: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket=20
'/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2) I did try to email the author of the docu=
ment,=20
but the email address was not active.=20

More recently, I have dabbled with gnomedb and pgaccess. Though I have=20
backends installed, I have not figured out how to get the frontends to sp=
eak=20
to the backends.=20

I wont give up just yet, but as I said, I'm no expert user. Colleagues of=
 mine=20
are using Access for a variety of tasks, and it would be nice to be able =
to=20
do the same things in Linux.

If there's a meeting in the Whitehaven area, I would certainly try to com=
e, as=20
long as I'm able to.

J. Stepputat