Well the database engine that is used I am not to bothered with its get a front end looking and feeling similar to access as this meens the students who have MS at home can still but in to practise what they have been shown in school. Dave Any one else remember the good days when pupils where encouraged to thing outside the box! -----Original Message----- From: Ian Lynch [mailto:ian.lynch@zmsl.com] Sent: 07 January 2005 11:11 To: Thomas Dyer Cc: David Selby; 'SuSe' Subject: RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] BETT On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 09:55, Thomas Dyer wrote:
David,
I'd suggest that Rekall is actually a better "database" teaching tool than MS Access, and might fit with the requirements of the AS / A2 courses.
I've done quite a lot of testing of it with a highly customised linux distro (based loosely on SuSE 9.2) which we're using for some office desktop installations.
Alternatively, OpenOffice 1.9x has some interesting ideas at "database" in the latest beta, which show some promise.
HSQLDB (Java based) and SQLite have both been discussed. HSQLDB is the choice of Sun engineers because it requires least work. Some FLOSS purists don't like Java too much. These both have potential as Access replacements but you can still connect to pretty much most Database servers. At OpenOffice.org we like to provide choice and flexinility :-)
From a "commercial" point of view, I'm interested in finding out how many schools are actually currently rolling out Linux onto their desktops.
Certainly an increasing number but its difficult to say exactly how many and its often experiments and partial implementation. -- Ian Lynch Education lead OpenOffice.org community