OpenOffice Base is a fully featured desktop database management system, designed to meet the needs of a broad range of users, from just tracking your personal CD collection, to producing a corporate monthly departmental sales report.
Features:
- Base offers wizards to help new to design users (or just new to Base) to create Tables, Queries, Forms and Reports, along with a set of predefined table definitions for tracking Assets, Customers, Sales Orders, Invoices and much more
- Tables: OpenOffice tables can be created in design view by a wizard. CSV files can also be imported into Base by opening them in Calc (one of the standard programs included in OpenOffice), selecting the cells and then dragging them into the “Tables” area on the main console. A wizard will open up to finish the importing steps. Some of the OpenOffice table field types are yes/no, date, text, integer, image and binary.
- Queries: Queries can be designed using a wizard, in SQL or in a design view. The wizard covers field selection, sorting, search conditions, grouping and aliases. Base has many built-in functions that can be used in queries. It has numerical, string, system and aggregate functions. It also contains modifiers such as “DISTINCT.” “DISTINCT” in a SQL query in Base will return only rows that contain unique entries.
- Forms: Forms are used for inputting data. Forms in Base can also be created in a wizard or design view. The wizard lets you select fields from tables, and it’s possible to add sub forms within the form. It also lets you arrange the look and feel of the form. Forms can contain many types of objects such as text, list boxes, and buttons.
- Reports: Reports can only be created in a wizard. OpenOffice base also supports Oracle’s Report Builder (previously known as SRB). This can be downloaded from the OpenOffice extensions website. The reports can be printed to PDF, emailed, saved as an HTML document or printed. The reports wizard lets you select fields, group and choose the layout.
When you need it only for personal use, Base offers the full HSQL relational engine, configured for single user, with the data stored right in the Base file, as well as native support for dBase flat files.
For power users in the enterprise, Base delivers native support drivers for a variety of multi-user engines: MySQL, Adabas D, MS Access and PostgreSQL. In addition, support for JDBC and ODBC standard drivers allows you to connect to virtually any existing database.
OpenOffice Base integrates seamlessly into the rest of the Apache OpenOffice suite applications, for example: supplying address book data for mail merge in WRITER using the industry standard LDAP protocol, or common address book formats such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows and Mozilla; or creating linked data ranges in CALC files for data pilot analysis or as the basis for charts.
[box type=”info”] Wiki info:
Official Website: http://www.openoffice.org/product/base.html
Database Driver: http://www.openoffice.org/dba/drivers/index.html[/box]
