[Preston] Hello - Replace Access?

[Nigel & Kate]

Happy New Year all!

Andrew asked:

>That's a point - can you replace Access for at least fairly basic
>database stuff by using front ends to MySQL/PostgreSQL now, does anyone
>know?

>At school, for one thing, I've been keeping tables of all our IT stuff
>(in HTML, stupidly). It's now at 268 workstations, printers, laptops,
>etc, and it'd be useful to be able to find out straight away what's in a
>certain department, what a particular staff member has signed out, etc
>etc. Reckon that's worth having a go at implementing as an SQL database?

Hi, I have yet to try this, but http://www.unixodbc.org/doc/OOoMySQL.pdf
tells of a way to do it. http://linuxworld.com.au/article.php3?aid=341&tid=1
gives some further info.

Apparently, you can set up an interface with openoffice.org, and MySQL or
whatever you prefer, using the Java ODBC drivers from openoffice.org. If you
do this, please let us all know how you get on, as we want to switch
completely to OSS, since Windows is really winding me up! Spent half of Xmas
struggling with the low level formatting/fdisking of an 80GB HD with
Win98SE. The Debian 50% was no trouble at all, despite me re-writing the MBR
etc. many times! Yes, I know about the newer version of fdisk now, thank
you! It wasn't very useful either!

Nigel