[Glastonbury] OOo and MySQL = Sorted!

[Rob Cornelius]

Well its been quite a day... But worth it.

Everything is working now. Got Open Office talking to a MySQL server on 
another machine and got these rather Microsoft people working with it... 
and actually enjoying it

I did get a lot of help from
http://www.cobolscript.com/profunix.htm
I cant take the credit myself. Basically compile the ODBC stuff... rpms 
just dont seem to work (at least on Mandrake 9.1)

Although I am a dedicated SQL purist myself and never use graphical 
tools normally the database component of Open Office is excellent.

You define your datasource (once) and create a query.  This can be 
either through typing SQL or in a graphical designer /very/ simillar to 
Access. Unlike Access though Open Office seems to be a lot better at 
converting SQL you manually enter to a graphical representation.

The best bit is how the data components integrate with the rest of the 
package. There is no separate "Access" program. Everything is done from 
within a spreadsheet or word processor docuement. Ok the query designer 
is in a separate window. Once you have saved your query you can then see 
it in a tree view of "objects" associated with that datasource. To get 
the data from that query into your docuement simply drag and drop the 
query icon from the data pane onto the document pane!

This bit to my mind is far easier than messing around exporting data 
with Access into Word or Excel. It even made the Microsoft nuts at this 
company sit up and take notice. Especially as I told them the 
spreadsheet data can be saved as Excel.

It was worth it....

Rob

Rob Cornelius wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I have spent a very frustrating afternoon trying to get OOo to connect 
> to a MySQL server on another machine.
> 
> I need something that "Just like Access" to keep my boss happy (and more 
> important the person working on the database who last learned a new 
> skill in 1995! OOo seems ideal and the screenshots of the database 
> component in action look great.
> 
> I have tried everything I can think of in the "add datasource" dialog. 
> Either I get a message to say I typed in my username and password wrong 
> or occasionally I get a message to say a so file is corrupt! The help 
> basically says "fill out the fields in the dialog" and I have been all 
> over Google.
> 
> I tried both the MySQL direct method and ODBC but both with the same 
> results.
> 
> Any help is appreciated
> 
> Rob
> 
> 
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