[PLUG] MS Access -> ? for OOo

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Mon Feb 11 05:10:06 UTC 2008


On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:16:18 -0800 (PST)
Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> dijo:

>    If Kexi stores the data in an embedded sqlite database then you're ahead
> of the game.
> 
>    There's probably a Ubuntu package for SQLite-3.5.5 (that's the latest
> version, released last week and it uses registers rather than the stack).
> Install it. Look at the file names that kexi uses; there should be one that
> represents the database. On the command line, type:
> 
> sqlite <filename> [Enter]
> 
>    Once the database is open, look at the help file to see all the ways you
> can look at the database:
> 
> sqlite> .help [Enter]
> 
>    You can change the separator, export the file using different delimiters,
> and so on. You can see the tables using the .table command, check the schema
> for a table using the .schema command, and so on.

OK, I did all that. sqlite3 is version 3.4.2 listed in Synaptic, and I
installed it. I did as you said above and the .help command listed all
kinds of things I could do. However, I did not see anything in the list
of options that I could not do just as easily from within the Kexi GUI.
>From the command line the only export option is still .csv. And
the .schema command just shows the design of a table, also easily
viewed and changed from within the GUI.

I did export my largest table as a .csv (setting the field delimiter to
semicolon) and then used it to merge into OOo. However, in OOo all I
can do is merge from the .csv; I can't find any way to open the .csv or
import the .csv as a table in an OOo Base document. If i can get it
(and my other tables) into Base then I can perform queries and stuff on
the data. And Writer will merge from a query as well as a table (at
least I think it will), which is handy. 

Part of the frustration is the user interface for Base. There are no
definitions for all the options when connecting to or opening a
database. For example, there is a long list of connection types (ADO,
JDBC, ODBC, and several more) and no information as to which one should
be selected for which application's files. As you go through the wizard
there are five or six pages and each one has numerous drop-downs with
similar incomprehensible choices. And at the end you discover that
evidently you chose something at the beginning that led Base to think
that you wanted to connect to a database on another machine over the
network, but when you go back through the pages you can't find the
option that led you down the wrong path in the maze. It's like the
telephone menu system at the IRS.

I'd actually prefer to use Kexi in its GUI incarnation. It seems very
intuitive to me, although that is because I am somewhat familiar with
Access and Kexi is very Access-like. However, I can't figure out how to
get any of my three word processors to see the Kexi file for merging,
not even KWord. Very strange, that.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm still poking around for a solution.



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