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orchid database?
On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 02:38:41 GMT in RSE3f.24186$wm3.19828@trnddc01 J Fortuna wrote:
"?" wrote in message rg... Snip However, I've yet to even get through a gross analysis of your webmail cgi-bin. -- Chris Dukes Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil Chris, Ok, so if suspicion breeds confidence, am I supposed to be suspicious about your analyzing of _my_ webmail cgi-bin, and how will that make me more confident, and not really really concerned? Hmm. Be very concerned and how bad my mind is munging names :-). In response to: I currently keep a spread sheet. snip I'm somewhat tempted to move to a "real database". I too started with a spreadsheet for my orchid info, and when I finally moved to the database, I wished that I had done it a long time ago. Do think more about it. It's definitely worth it. OrchidKitty's email shows some of the really cool stuff that one can do with a database -- OrchidKitty, I am really impressed! Even for less complex data, a database can be much more organized and flexible than a spreadsheet. And the more data you have, the more awkward the spreadsheet becomes. How many orchids do you have now, Chris? I agree that databases tend to work much better than spread sheets. However, databases cannot be maintained for weeks on end with a printout and a pencil or pen :-). Moving to a database has been hindered by laziness and cheapness. Open Office currently lacks something equivalent to access and rolling my own database is going to lead to a tangent on generating tables for printout and attempt #3 at writing a GUI app. As for the orchids... 45 that are alive and in the sheet. 1 from the GF that is currently undergoing spag 'n bag because the GF rotted the roots off. 3 ludisia being propagated via cuttings. 2 nobile dendrobiums being propagated from keikis. 1 ludisia propagated via cutting and given to GF. 1 ludisia propagated via cutting and sold. We'll just not talk about the african violets, bromeliads, spider plants, philodendrons, epihyllum, peppers, begonias .... I refuse to worry until I'm in my 80s and one of my sprogs asks "Just how many more ... are you going to propagate?" and I respond "I don't know, how many more acres do I have left?" (My granddad managed to cover a couple acres of land in South Carolina in camelias before he died.) -- Chris Dukes Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil |
#2
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orchid database?
"?" wrote in message rg... On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 02:38:41 GMT in RSE3f.24186$wm3.19828@trnddc01 J Fortuna wrote: "?" wrote in message rg... Snip In response to: I currently keep a spread sheet. snip I'm somewhat tempted to move to a "real database". I too started with a spreadsheet for my orchid info, and when I finally moved to the database, I wished that I had done it a long time ago. Do think more about it. It's definitely worth it. OrchidKitty's email shows some of the really cool stuff that one can do with a database -- OrchidKitty, I am really impressed! Even for less complex data, a database can be much more organized and flexible than a spreadsheet. And the more data you have, the more awkward the spreadsheet becomes. How many orchids do you have now, Chris? I agree that databases tend to work much better than spread sheets. However, databases cannot be maintained for weeks on end with a printout and a pencil or pen :-). Moving to a database has been hindered by laziness and cheapness. Open Office currently lacks something equivalent to access and rolling my own database is going to lead to a tangent on generating tables for printout and attempt #3 at writing a GUI app. Well, you coud try MySQL. It is free, and if you get the administration app available for it, creating new tables is as easy as it is in MS Access. I have worked with both. MySQL is, though, a more serious, production quality DB and so, for ease of entering data, and then viewing it, you'd need to create a GUI App. You say you've tried to create a GUI App a couple times. May I ask using what, and in what programming language? It is quite easy, now, to create GUI applications using products like NetBeans (free from www.netbeans.org) and Suns Java SDK (free from Sun). It is hard to beat free. If you want to give it a try, using NetBeans and Java, and you get stuck, just ask and I'll try to help you. But since I try to earn a living doing this, I can't guarantee an instantaneous response. A terrific resource for you are those Usenet newsgroups focussed on computer programming, but again patience is sometimes required. The fact is that spreadsheets are modelling tools, wholly inappropriate for trying to maintain a database. But it is tempting to abuse them in this way because it is so easy to use them to manage data. Using a spreadsheet to manage data, though, is rather like using a hammer to drive a screw. You can do it, but doing so is usually harder, and always less efficient, than using the right tool, and it will eventually lead to significant problems. I'd wager that Open Office doesn't have something like MS Access largely because there are several open source DB products including, but not limited to, MySQL and postgres. Cheers, Ted -- R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D. R & D Decision Support Solutions http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/ Healthy Living Through Informed Decision Making |
#3
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orchid database?
Open Office does have a database, called (cleverly enough) BASE:
http://www.openoffice.org/product2/base.html It apparently supports MS Access databases natively. I have yet to try it. I've been using Open Office suite for a couple of months now; the 1.1.5 version has been remarkably useful. My third book is being written in it as something of an experiment; the drawing program allows me to create sketches and then insert them into the document. Now at 124 pages, and not even 150 kilobytes in size- which given the stuff I've jammed in there isn't too bad. For those of you not aware, Open Office has a word processor, a spreadsheet, a drawing program, and other goodies- for free. It can take Microsoft files, and an upcoming release is expected to build substantially on the existing version. Highly recommended. http://www.openoffice.org (It's free as in beer. Very nice.) The email address in the header doesn't work. That's why I don't reply to your emails. -AJHicks Chandler, AZ |
#4
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orchid database?
On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:22:20 -0400 in Ted Byers wrote:
I agree that databases tend to work much better than spread sheets. However, databases cannot be maintained for weeks on end with a printout and a pencil or pen :-). Moving to a database has been hindered by laziness and cheapness. Open Office currently lacks something equivalent to access and rolling my own database is going to lead to a tangent on generating tables for printout and attempt #3 at writing a GUI app. Well, you coud try MySQL. It is free, and if you get the administration app available for it, creating new tables is as easy as it is in MS Access. I have worked with both. MySQL is, though, a more serious, production quality DB and so, for ease of entering data, and then viewing it, you'd need to create a GUI App. You say you've tried to create a GUI App a couple times. May I ask using what, and in what programming language? It is quite easy, now, to create GUI applications using products like NetBeans (free from www.netbeans.org) and Suns Java SDK (free from Sun). It is hard to beat free. If you want to give it a try, using NetBeans and Java, and you get stuck, just ask and I'll try to help you. But since I try to earn a living doing this, I can't guarantee an instantaneous response. A terrific resource for you are those Usenet newsgroups focussed on computer programming, but again patience is sometimes required. I'm familiar with mysql (In fact it has become a somewhat important part of my current job). I tend to keep away from Java. With the appropriate libraries seems to be a decent, if slow, tool for providing user interfaces. It seems to be wholly inadequate for data processing. I'm old school C/sed/awk/perl/DB2 SQL including implementing state machine parsers in perl and awk. The first attempt, which was successful, was a problem tracking application done in REXX with one of the GUI toolkits for REXX in the early 90s (DB2 was the backend for the data). The second attempt was a connect four game in Visual Age Small Talk. I'm afraid that my viewpoint on object oriented programming was indelibly tainted by someone more focused on the method than the result. It doesn't help that I'm one of those folks that doesn't see an issue with inflicting an obscure positional grammar onto end users :-). The fact is that spreadsheets are modelling tools, wholly inappropriate for trying to maintain a database. But it is tempting to abuse them in this way because it is so easy to use them to manage data. Using a spreadsheet to manage data, though, is rather like using a hammer to drive a screw. You can do it, but doing so is usually harder, and always less efficient, than using the right tool, and it will eventually lead to significant problems. In this case a spread sheet is a substitute for graph paper that is less likely to be water damaged :-). (Except it still gets water damaged because I work from printouts.) I'd wager that Open Office doesn't have something like MS Access largely because there are several open source DB products including, but not limited to, MySQL and postgres. When I say "Access" I really mean something like QMF and that horrid GUI forms tool for DB2/2 from a decade past. From what I've seen of Access is that it provides a more up to date implementation of such functionality. However I'm not entirely certain as it's almost always interfacing to the most braindead database schema I've ever seen :-). -- Chris Dukes Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil |
#5
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orchid database?
"?" wrote in message rg... On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:22:20 -0400 in Ted Byers wrote: [snip] I'm familiar with mysql (In fact it has become a somewhat important part of my current job). I tend to keep away from Java. With the appropriate libraries seems to be a decent, if slow, tool for providing user interfaces. It seems to be wholly inadequate for data processing. I'm old school C/sed/awk/perl/DB2 SQL including implementing state machine parsers in perl and awk. I understand completely. My first programs were written two and a half decades ago in fortran on punch cards. Remember those? My first preference for programming is C++, but I find java today provides decent performance. Sun has come a long way with it, even though their support for generic programming is severely crippled. It used to be as slow as molasses in January, but now it s reasonable. It isn't nearly as fast as a binary produced by a good C++ compiler, but it is adequate for the problem domains I use it for. The first attempt, which was successful, was a problem tracking application done in REXX with one of the GUI toolkits for REXX in the early 90s (DB2 was the backend for the data). The second attempt was a connect four game in Visual Age Small Talk. I'm afraid that my viewpoint on object oriented programming was indelibly tainted by someone more focused on the method than the result. It doesn't help that I'm one of those folks that doesn't see an issue with inflicting an obscure positional grammar onto end users :-). In this case, if we're talking professional software development, we'd be at odds. I have never had a software project fail and a large reason for this is that I take the user's needs and desires into account, producing an interface that is intuitive and very easy to use, even if the user's skill level is that he can only turn the computer on and use a word processor as a glorified typewriter. The fact is that spreadsheets are modelling tools, wholly inappropriate for trying to maintain a database. But it is tempting to abuse them in this way because it is so easy to use them to manage data. Using a spreadsheet to manage data, though, is rather like using a hammer to drive a screw. You can do it, but doing so is usually harder, and always less efficient, than using the right tool, and it will eventually lead to significant problems. In this case a spread sheet is a substitute for graph paper that is less likely to be water damaged :-). (Except it still gets water damaged because I work from printouts.) I have seen whole computers fried because somebody spilled water on a spreadsheet. ;-) Computers and water don't mix with good results. My M.Sc. supervisor never used a text editor. Instead, he would write out programs on paper, and I would have to enter them, and then debug them, for him. And this was not that long ago. I'd wager that Open Office doesn't have something like MS Access largely because there are several open source DB products including, but not limited to, MySQL and postgres. I have been corrected. Open Office does have a database called base. So that means there is even less reason to use a spreadsheet. ;-) When I say "Access" I really mean something like QMF and that horrid GUI forms tool for DB2/2 from a decade past. From what I've seen of Access is that it provides a more up to date implementation of such functionality. However I'm not entirely certain as it's almost always interfacing to the most braindead database schema I've ever seen :-). MS Access is a very good product, and quite appropriate in many contexts. In some cases, I wowuld, and in fact have, used it. However, for most of what I find myself doing lately, I have to use something more pwerful, such as MySQL. Cheers, Ted -- R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D. R & D Decision Support Solutions http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/ Healthy Living Through Informed Decision Making |
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