---------- Original Message -------------
Subject: [SLE] Re: Relational Databases with SuSE 9.1
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 03:39:41 +0100
From: Sid Boyce
On 18/08/04 01:59 +0100, Sid Boyce wrote:
The modern databases and their GUI's are jobs for the DBA boys, they complicate unnecessarily something simple.
May I jump in here? You guys are confusing topics based on terminology.
A database is *any structured set of data*. A phone book is a database. My recipe list is a database. /etc/hosts is a database.
What you guys are talking about are database MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS. BIG difference! And no, I'm not just being pendantic.
How I manage my set of automative tools (oil can, gas tank, a screwdriver) is vastly different from how the 16-bay automotive center down the street manages their tools. We both have a database (of tools) but our needs are vastly different.
For Sid's hamradio log, PostgreSQL and MySQL are WAY overpowered. But I'd like to see Sid use his hamradio log tools to maintain 15 years worth of daily and monthly data from the stock market. See the difference?
What both Pete and I are looking for is something that is less complicated to set up and use. I bet after umpteen years he could go back to Dbase III and be productive or I can go back to the shareware and be likewise productive.
For people who don't need an SQL-based database, there are plenty of other choices. Since Pete is enamored of Dbase III (I'm an old FoxPRo guy, myself), he should look into XBase, which is the generic DBase and runs under Linux as well as Windows.
OK, I shall have a look at XBase, tried it some years ago, but it segfaulted and I never got to evaluate it. ---------- Where can you dl XBase? Google search doesn't offer much - looks like it's been re-named and and I don't know what all else. I finally found Xharbour.org, that has an xBase compiler for Linux (SUSE 9.1, even!). Would that be it? ---------
If you are using a GUI, it should hide the complexity from you and allow you to concentrate on the end result.
And alot of GUIs do that. Which is why I'm at the command line more often than not. ;-) I for one, need that complexity. Then again, you don't, so we probably shouldn't be using the same tools.
Likewise, I use the commandline mostly, but for some peripheral activities, I just GUI them out of the way. ----------- The problem I had with a GUI like Access is that the terminology seemed too confusing. The idea of a one-to-many relationship makes sense when I read about it, but I always messed up the implementation. The idea of a left join (just an example) in SQL may not make quite as much sense, but is easier for me to understand how to implement it. After I played with MySQL, I never looked back at Access! -------------
Appreciating that you guys are not responsible for the state of the software we sometimes have to suffer and if you need it badly enough, you stick with it until you have a good degree of proficiency, but there are other things I'd rather tackle. May be I was spoilt by the ease-of-use available years ago and hence my puzzlement at the current
That's like me saying "why do I need to buy all this ham radio gear and take tests and study and stuff? All I want to do is to listen to the baseball game. It shouldn't be this difficult". Well, it wouldn't be that difficult if I used the right tools, e.g. a transistor radio.
Not really, there some things you can't master, I've built most of my ham gear and test equipment over many years and enjoyed it, but some guys don't have the knowledge and even some with the knowledge would not want to spend the time and effort, so they buy ready made equipment and are mad about building antennas, yet others get everything off the shelf, all hams just the same, but with different needs. There was a GUI going back some years that made mysql easy to handle, too easy perhaps, so it was dropped in favour of the new tools and the old version didn't run with the new glibc - seemed like turf protection to me. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce .... Hamradio G3VBV and keen Flyer =====LINUX ONLY USED HERE===== -- Web Developer Matheteuo Christian Fellowship webdev@matheteuo.org http://matheteuo.org/ Running MS Windows + Office = $400 Running Linux + OpenOffice.org = $0 Celebrating as you delete your format your Windows drive = PRICELESS