[PLUG] kexi

[John Jason Jordan]

On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:26:47 -0800 (PST)
Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> dijo:

> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> 
> > Not only is the GUI not working (either because it is broken or because I
> > can't figure it out), but SQL statements are also impossible to figure
> > out. I can see that it's going to take a long time to get this sorted.
> 
>    If you're getting wrapped around the axel and not getting done the work
> you need with your data consider sticking with Access. It's all GUI,
> displays and manipulates your data and doesn't ask you to learn SQL or a
> CLI.
> 
>    If the process is more important than the end results, then continue as
> you are. If the end results are what you really need before the end of the
> decade, stick with what you know and like.

Actually, both are important, and I would rate them equally.

I have just this morning discovered the source of the DELETE problem,
at least partly. A participant on the Kexi e-list told me "only SELECT
queries work, no DELETE, UPDATE, CREATE queries for now in the gui."
That doesn't explain why I can't get it to work with bare SQL, but at
least I can stop poking at the GUI. The only kind of DELETE I need is
all records in the table, and I can do that with the Edit menu for now.

Having said that I have discovered something else. Way back in the bad
old Access days I needed worktable as an intermediate table. That was
because OOo could merge from a table, but not from an Access query. I
just now tried to get OOo to merge from a Kexi query, and again it
failed to see the Kexi query. However, now that I have the Kexi
database registered, OOo sees all the tables just fine. Plus, OOo Base
has a very nice, robust GUI query creator. I just spent a few minutes
poking at it and quickly created the query I needed. I can merge into
Writer based on the OOo Base query, so I don't even need worktable. 

Ultimately I'd like to do data manipulation in Kexi, but for now I can
create the queries in OOo. I still have to do data editing in Kexi,
because Base sees the Kexi tables as read-only. Theoretically another
option is to move all the tables into Base and just forget about Kexi,
but that doesn't seem to be working. Plus according to all the reviews
Base is extremely slow, and breaks every time a new Java comes out.

I have what I need for now. Thanks to all for the suggestions and
advices.