On Saturday 04 October 2003 15:48, MJ Ray wrote:
On 2003-10-04 14:22:03 +0100 "Grainge, Derek"
wrote: What we're crying out for is a nice front end for querying editing and displaying data - assuming of course it also contains tools which simplify the creation of the database itself. And as soon as you create a fancy front end, you have to store it - in a proprietary way of course :-)
Indeed. I was quite impressed with the quick demonstration of knoda(?) that Garry gave me when I visited him earlier this year, but I've not had time to investigate it further since. I'd love to hear comments from people who have evaluated it for teaching use.
I've used pg_access in the past, but that is rather limited and would need quite some work to bring it up to scratch. It does have the benefit of being in TCL, which makes it a bit more cross-platform than knoda, though. Beyond that, you seem to get into full-blown visual programming environments at the moment, which is further than most schools need to go.
I have used Knoda for AS and A-level project work and it seems to do all that is required. The only problem is that I am not sure that the examiners know what to make of it judging from some of the comments from moderators, but I am in the process of getting this sorted. They have really only ever seen Access and so are not used to the different design views in Knoda. Knoda differs from Access in that students have to write their own queries in SQL and this gives them a deeper understanding of the underlying table structures and also gives them some concrete skills from a qualification (ICT) that does not give them any experience of any programming or scripting, and seems to have evolved its practical aspects from parallel evolution with MS office. regards garry
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