New Desktop Database
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@gjacobse said:
Never mind.. I see a point. If you are using the mailing list to track donors year to year,.. you need a DB for updates to a person. Mailing lists I have done in the past have been simple and were done in Excel...
Excel will do that. Excel will front an RDBMS.
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@dafyre said:
Whereas moving from Access to something like LibreOffice Base would still have a learning curve, I'd be surprised if he could learn and develop a PHP Database App and implement a reporting engine for it in less time than he could learn to use Base.
It's not just time to get up and running but TCO. Over time that Access system will get more and more cumbersome. The PHP approach will remain simple, easy and free. Over time it is the cheaper option.
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Well, that's another way to move with this.
The main things I use Paradox for and not Excel are:
- nth selection of sample
- multiple simultaneous comparisons of data (if I have to match multiple fields in the same database, say first name, last name, city, and two other codes)
That's about it.
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These are like 1 time things, maybe a few times over a few weeks, then I never go back to the DB.
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@BRRABill said:
Well, that's another way to move with this.
The main things I use Paradox for and not Excel are:
- nth selection of sample
- multiple simultaneous comparisons of data (if I have to match multiple fields in the same database, say first name, last name, city, and two other codes)
That's about it.
I hate saying this but.... it almost sounds like you could do this more easily in straight SQL and not have any front end at all.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's not just time to get up and running but TCO. Over time that Access system will get more and more cumbersome. The PHP approach will remain simple, easy and free. Over time it is the cheaper option.
How does using Access get more cumbersome? Because of version upgrades, etc?
You run into that with PHP as well (arguably at nowhere near the scale that you could see in Access).
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Are you able to provide a sample? What what example does the data look like (three lines is fine) and what does a query look like?
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@dafyre said:
How does using Access get more cumbersome? Because of version upgrades, etc?
Version upgrades, paying for version upgrades, being locked into an enterprise-only product family, being locked into a product that appears to be well along the phase-out path, having to be on Windows, compatibility, etc.
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@dafyre said:
You run into that with PHP as well (arguably at nowhere near the scale that you could see in Access).
No he should not. Deploy on Linux, system is self maintaining for a project of this nature. Everything updates itself. Nothing to worry about.
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@scottalanmiller said:
No he should not. Deploy on Linux, system is self maintaining for a project of this nature. Everything updates itself. Nothing to worry about.
And then when PHP upgrades to a version that is not compatible with his PHP application?
I get your point though.
What about using something like Base? You get the benefits of Access (easy to use, lower learning curve if you are coming from Access), but you also get cross-platform compatibility, no paying for version upgrades, or being locked into Windows.
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@dafyre said:
And then when PHP upgrades to a version that is not compatible with his PHP application?
Doesn't really happen. I assumed that that was your concern in the previous thread. If you wrote normal PHP going back 15 years, it still runs today. No changes.
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@dafyre said:
What about using something like Base? You get the benefits of Access (easy to use, lower learning curve if you are coming from Access), but you also get cross-platform compatibility, no paying for version upgrades, or being locked into Windows.
Definitely better, but I've not used it first hand to say. Worth a try, though. Base + MariaDB or even Base + SQLite.
