Hello everybody,
for some time now I am looking for a friendly (and of course powerful)
desktop database for my research and home uses. It should be possible
to build moderately complex relational database structures.

The first that comes to my mind is Filemaker, although this is not
exactly cheap. I did some things with Approach some centuries ago, but
I don't know if it still exists. Then recently I found Brilliant
Database which comes quite close to what I am looking for (you can
build tables, forms and relations very easily without having to wory
about primary keys, indices etc etc).

Is there anything similar that I have overlooked ?

Thanks a lot for any comments
Judith

Judith Baltsar <judith.baltsar (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote:

not IBM.
to pay for it then look at OpenOffice Base
<http://www.openoffice.org/product/base.html>. Microsoft Access
<http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/FX100487571033.aspx> is
similar and you may already own it if you have one of the more
expensive versions of Microsoft Office installed.

If your emphasis is on powerful then head for the Oracle Technology
site <http://www.oracle.com/technology/index.html>. The database and
the development tools are free for users like you and they offer a
choice of development tools for web based and/or desktop applications.
The downside is that you will need to learn about client/server
databases and decide between the application development tools they
offer.

Hi Judith,

What volumes of data are you using?

Microsofts SQL Server Express edition (free) ticks the bits about design
etc... Management Studio which comes with this edition has all the table
design etc... in there as well as a query builder, query tuning etc...

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/edition.../features.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/edition...s/default.mspx

The problem here is that there is no application front end to SQL; however,
you can get Microsoft Expressions which will allow you to build fairly
powerful web stuff without much if any coding.

Tony.

--
Tony Rogerson, SQL Server MVP
http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tonyrogerson
[Ramblings from the field from a SQL consultant]
http://sqlserverfaq.com
[UK SQL User Community]


"Judith Baltsar" <judith.baltsar (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote

On 26 Sept., 15:00, Judith Baltsar <judith.balt... (AT) gmx (DOT) de> wrote:
Oracle Express Edition is free
You can compare editions here http://www.oracle.com/database/product_editions.html
You can easily upgrade to bigger editions if needed.

Mmmmm to be frank I become very suspicious reading such sentences
So you want data base or data waste?
http://www.gplivna.eu/papers/data_wa..._data_base.htm
And the concepts explained above are relevant to every DB, not only
Oracle.

Gints Plivna
http://www.gplivna.eu

Gints Plivna <gints.plivna (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

would suit the OP. The step from embedded to client/server databases
is large and completely unnecessary for "research and home use". She
probably does not even need a multi-user database.
introduction "So who cares about your own notebook or computer? Nobody
do, except you." The (fairly tiny) DBA in me was appalled when I saw
the way my brother had implemented an MS Access database to store his
university philosophy notes. However, an explanation of how to
normalise his database or that it would be very slow and probably
corrupted if several users accessed it simultaneously would neither
benefit nor interest him.

Hello it's me again,
thanks so far for all your answers - I think there is some
clarification necessary of what I really meant and needed.

First of all, there is no multi-user environment and networking
involved - everything is happening on my local hard disc and nowhere
else. Number of records will be a few to several (ten)thousands at the
most - not much for a decent database like Oracle I reckon. What I
really want is a light-weight (I don't want to use a road-train when I
just want to fetch some apples) and flexible application. Referential
integrity and all these things are fine if you know exactly know the
structure of your data. But in case of my studies exact structure is
only the second (or even third) step. First I have to collect (from
various sources) semi-structured data (decriptions of biological
species), then I have to survey data, see how I can get more structure
into the data. In part this requires relational integrity (always
using the same name for the same thing), in part this requires high
flexibility (adding and restructuring fields, boolean searching across
several or all fields). After thinking a lot I ended up using an old
copy of Bekon Idealist which is quite antique by now but is - in it's
very unique way - very flexible. In another case (which involves
historical data about persons and events) I try using Brilliant
database, which is more similar to "normal databases" but is still
more flexible than conventional databases (no thinking about indexes
and primary or secondary keys, just say "I want a relational lookup
field" and you get it - no questions asked; another example: in both
Idealist and Brilliant DB I don't have to worry about field length - I
have either "line of text" or "multi-line text"). For you Oracle gurus
this is most probably kids stuff :-) but there are many real world
situations where you need more flexibility and even fuzziness in
structure than these "big databases" can offer.

David: I didn't have a look at OpenOffice Base for quite a long time
and the new incarnation looks quite promising. I do all my office work
with OpenOffice (already with old StarOffice 5.1) but lost interest in
the database when they moved to Adabas). I will give it another try.

Again: thanks for all your input
Judith

On 28 Sept., 20:16, David Segall <da... (AT) address (DOT) invalid> wrote:
Oh yea I just gave info about something I knew. And BTW Oracle XE with
APEX is quite usable also for 1 user

OK then I recommend Excel. Because for me the first step is MS Excel,
and the next one is Oracle. I'm of course not saying that it is the
only right way ))

Gints Plivna
http://www.gplivna.eu