[ILUG] DB recommends Newbie

[Niall O Broin]

On Sunday 23 May 2004, lists2004 at utvinternet.com (Frank Murphy) wrote:

>I will be putting a Linux server together (FC2), for the S.E.P.

Linux server as a solution for somebody else's problem - that's a good
idea.

>Trying to encourage them out of MS Access (ecdl) training,
>
>I came across MySQL, or FirebirdSQL after a Google
>
>Any users out there, can give opinions on suitability?

They're different things, really. Access is NOT a database - it's a tool
for building applications, which is delivered with an integrated datase
(used be the Jet database engine, now AFAIK it's delivered with a cut
down version of SQL server) which is used for most applications of
Access, but it can also be connected to a real database via ODBC.

MySQL and FirebirdSQL are database servers (some people would say that
MySQL shouldn't be called a database either, but for the purposes of
this discussion, let's not go there) and in order to use them you need
some kind of a client.

There are two projects for KDE which aim to provide Access like
functionality while connected to various databases e.g. MySQL, Postgres.
These are knoda (http://www.knoda.org/) and rekall
(http://www.rekallrevealed.org). I haven't used either, but they'd
certainly be worth looking at. 

However, they are both KDE clients - if the clients at S.E.P. will be
Windows boxs, then you may be stuck with Access. As mentioned, it is
possible to use Access in conjunction with say MySQL. This is very
worthwhile if they're trying to develop multi user apps or have large
databases, both areas where Access is, shall we say, weak.



Niall