(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

If I needed a database I would probably use google base or open office
http://base.google.com/base/dashboard?hl=en_US

Maybe it is time to consider Pupbase?
A community project perhaps?

We have excellent search code menu / filesystem / pfind

What we need is input data, present sort and search

Are you using a database? Do you use Wine and and a Windows product? Is there a Linux database suitable for Puppy?

Anyone interested in coding / adapting something for Puppy?

There is a GTK2 product that uses Sqlite3, looks good for Puppy, but it didn't work when I tried it -- but I might have done something wrong.
I can't remember its name, but I did discuss it a couple of months ago on this forum.

Personally I'm partial to FileMaker Pro in Windows, and I run it under Wine in Puppy, BUT Hendrikus once mentioned a FileMaker clone called GLOM that might be ported to Puppy.

http://www.glom.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

I tried compiling it for Puppy, but at the time my skills in that area were underdeveloped and there were a heap of dependencies that I struggled to meet. Maybe that has changed and the time is now right for someone to try again.

Here's some food for thought. http://www.gnome-db.org/ It compiles in Puppy and uses any of SQLite3, MySQL, or PostgreSQL . All it took to compile was gtk+-2.8.17.pet.

It would be great if this could be used with MU's GTKbasic!

2byte

I guess I also have to ask, "What's wrong with sbase from Open Office?" It works, as long as you have JRE installed along with Open Office, and it's no more complex than (yech!) Acce$$.

Just wonderin' is all.

WhoDo, does the OpenOffice database have similar look-and-feel to Access? Does it make Access-refugees feel at-home? If so, that would be a point in its favour.

BarryK wrote:WhoDo, does the OpenOffice database have similar look-and-feel to Access? Does it make Access-refugees feel at-home? If so, that would be a point in its favour.

It could be a twin brother, Barry. Access refugees should take to it like a duck to water. Of course neither is all that easy to use, but both are quite powerful.

See the following screenshot:

Last time I tried using Base for a real project (with OOo 2.0.## windows) I found it very difficult. Simple things in Access97 like subforms were virtually impossible, and it crashed often. Also from my point of view I like to use Access format, because if I get stuck in OOo I can often do something extra with the Access tools ... but it doesn't seem to support the format anymore.

Another negative for puppy users may be that OOo is quite a large program and not really in the same 'small is good' line of thinking as basic puppy.

On a positive for OOo Base the integration with Calc & Write is excellent and works well for example with single table mail merges. Anything over that though and Access was miles ahead when I tried, but maybe it's improved since then 2.0 series, I did DL 2.2 but haven't really tried yet.

I think the linux world is really lacking quick and dirty development tools like Access & VB. Love or hate them they can do things sooo simply provided you stay within their limits. I know lots of people here and in linux world generally are working on equivalents but at this point they still aren't quite there as far as I can see.

DB

PS. GLOM does look quite nice.

I use sbase also and it looks nice.
But sbase is unable to produce a report with subtotals and unfortunately that's what I need.
In fact the only sql function in a report (or query) which can be defined is 'count'. (not very exciting)

So I am interested in an alternative solution.

is kexi any good?
http://www.kexi-project.org/about.html

Kexi looks quite nice but seems to need KOffice (and KDE?) Maybe I will try on ubuntu. DB

BarryK wrote:There is a GTK2 product that uses Sqlite3, looks good for Puppy, but it didn't work when I tried it -- but I might have done something wrong.
I can't remember its name, but I did discuss it a couple of months ago on this forum.

This is it:
http://sqlitedbms.sourceforge.net/index.htm
I had another look at it, still can't get it to work, it just serves a blank page. It's very frustrating, as it looks real good, and small.

What about testing it in another distro, to at least see it working and evaluate it?

Excuse me for butting in here. Has everyone forgotten that Puppy already has a good database? SQLite3 can be used in Puppy from the terminal, puppybasic, murgalua, perl, etc. If you want a GUI database manager there is TkSQLite. GUI forms can be created with tcl/tk, gins, puppybasic, gtk and others. A basic html report engine should be relatively easy to code with any of these languages. What more do you need?

Komodo

Komodo wrote:Excuse me for butting in here. Has everyone forgotten that Puppy already has a good database? SQLite3 can be used in Puppy from the terminal, puppybasic, murgalua, perl, etc. If you want a GUI database manager there is TkSQLite. GUI forms can be created with tcl/tk, gins, puppybasic, gtk and others. A basic html report engine should be relatively easy to code with any of these languages. What more do you need?

Hi Komodo,

What I need, and I guess most of the Puppy users I deal with need, is to have someone create a nice, easy GUI frontend for SQLite3 so we don't have to use tcl/tk, gins, puppybasic, gtk et al to create forms and reports. I'll have a look at TkSQLite, but if it doesn't have those features out-of-the-box then it won't be enough for the average user.

Anyone who can come up with such a simple, easy-to-use and small DBMS for Puppy will be doing the whole community a HUGE favor IMHO.

TkSQlite has been getting praises for over a year now, see
http://reddog.s35.xrea.com/wiki/TkSQLite.html

As to the comment:

this script is useful, but 20mb TCL prerequisite..?

- will that translate to around 7 MB compressed in Puppy?

Alternative GUI managers based on QT are:

LiteMan - http://igorkh.freeshell.org/en/software/liteman.html
SQliteMan - http://sqliteman.sourceforge.net/

Someone suggested this copyrighted source code might be of interest
http://www.ocelot.ca/download.htm

On our previous forum (or I think it might have been the very earliest one) there was a link to a small and simple command line database

I tried this and it set up fields and then created a flat file text file. It was 22k if I remember rightly - seems to have been lost in the puppy archives?

I looked at Quisp and could not make head nor tales worth telling . . .

Warren is right. Front end for the quiche eating hordes . . .

this file here is a ready to run executable of tksqlite:

http://reddog.s35.xrea.com/software/tks ... bin.tar.gz

when extracted the actual binary is about the same size as the .tar.gz file as it's made from
a tcl/tk starkit. it contains within itself sqlite, tcl/tk, tktable, and other libraries required for it's use. to see inside of it you need tclkit & sdx.kit:

http://www.equi4.com/pub/tk/8.5a4/tclkit-linux-x86.gz

http://www.equi4.com/pub/sk/sdx.kit

these can be renamed to tclkit & sdx respectively, both given executable permissions, then moved to /usr/bin. then if you're in the same directory as tksqlite & do:
, this unwraps the result to directory tksqlite.vfs.

as puppy already has tcl/tk environment & sqlite, maybe we could remove some stuff from tksqlite.vfs & wrap it again, resulting in a smaller binary?

WhoDo wrote

What I need, and I guess most of the Puppy users I deal with need, is to have someone create a nice, easy GUI frontend for SQLite3 so we don't have to use tcl/tk, gins, puppybasic, gtk et al to create forms and reports.

Hello WhoDo. I'll second that. A form and report designer is a huge undertaking though. Even more so when the next requirement would be easy data binding to these. GnomeDB has this for forms and grids and can use SQLite3. A report designer is in the works but who knows when that will be ready. Then you still have to code with C or C++ to get a working application. Glom looks good but who can get it to work in Puppy? Plus it requires PostgreSQL.

Komodo

Raffy,
Thanks for your excellent suggestion. I downloaded TkSQlite around 10:00 am and by lunch time, I had created a database, built three tables and populated them, and I am now already well on my way to completing a golf handicapping system for my league's tournaments. However, I will admit I had a head start on this task from developing the handicapping system a few years ago on Windows with Ocelot SQL DBMS. I really miss the absence of Ocelot on Puppy, but I believe that with extra effort I can accomplish the same result with TkSQlite.
Thanks again,
~Dick

I looked at the requirements for TkSqlite. Puppy already has most of it. Extra stuff needed are Tcl/Tk library packages:
Tile 0.7+, TkTable 2.9+, Dict 8.5+, TableList 4.5+, and optionally some bits out of Trf and Tclib.
All up, that shouldn't add much to the size.
Note, Tclib is a collection of libraries, and we can pull out the ones needed.