[HLUG] Open Source Databases

[Dr Chris Owens]

Hi All,

Please can I pick the brains of the group for a bit of advice.

I have been asked to re-start work from 15-20 years ago on Healthcare 
content and logistics, trouble is it was all done with SuperBase which 
has long gone bust and won't in any case run on modern machines.

The key ingredient SB had was an integrated provision to write scripts 
easily (in a form of Basic) that by-passed GUI services (especially for 
Forms and Output) and gave easy and very tight control of cursor 
movement to rows and after a bit of fiddling to columns apart from 
customising Forms and Output. This meant the content of every cell was 
easily accessed which is my first requirement. (I could be wrong, but 
using SQL in e.g. MySql would be a hard way of managing this sort of 
access with or without content manipulation).

Two other key requirements are a strong import and export facility that 
can handle as many  (esp proprietary) formats as possible with good 
filtering capability and the system needs a good capacity for volume. 
Speed is not critical and finally I would like it to be Open Source.

So I suppose what is really needed is a dogged stable facility without 
too many bells and whistles that is reasonably easy to use and can act 
as a processing engine - any sophisticated data visualisation capability 
would just be a bonus.

Thank you for any help or advice.

All the best to everyone

Chris