Personal Data Base again.....
Mark A. Davis
What we are STILL looking for is a "personal database program" for lack
of a better term. My users have need to enter simple info in database
formats and be able to produce various reports and simple queries.
Specs as follows-
1) Unix software, of course. Available for at least SCO. No non-native
programs. Commercial or PD or Shareware. Not attached to groups
of other REQUIRED applications (like applets).
2) Text based, completely menu driven, terminfo/cap compatible.
3) Point and click type menus with line draw boxes and arrow key usage.
4) NO COMMAND LINE commands like you would find in Dbase, Qbase, and Foxbase.
5) Ability to import and export files as ASCII
6) Ability to sort, select, and print/save custom reports and data entry
screens. Ability to print labels.
7) Fully multi-user friendly, multi-printers, centralized administrative
control over maintenance, security, printer setup, etc.
8) Ability to store these files in user's own home directories (like any
other OA tool- IE word processing, spreadsheet, email), NOT
centralized.
9) Relatively simple to use, without 6 trillion options and abilities.
I would have thought such a basic Office Automation tool would certainly
have been available by now for Unix. It is a staple on all kinds of other
platforms in various incarnations. I have looked and looked for two years
now..... Other office automation tools like WordPerfect and Lotus just
don't cut it for simple DB needs. There just HAS to be a large market for
such a tool.
The following have been ruled out because they do not meet the criteria
above (please don't suggest them, they are simply not what I would
call "personal database programs"):
Foxbase, Foxpro, DBase, Filix, FilePro, QBase, Progress (and the like),
Recital
Have you seen such a creature? I would ******LOVE****** to hear from
you. Meanwhile, we are stuck with either no functionality or have to
limp by on tools which are totally unsuited for the purpose...Thanks!
--
/--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Mark A. Davis | Lake Taylor Hospital | Norfolk,VA (804)-461-5001x431 |
| Director/SysAdmin | Information Systems | ma...@taylor.infi.net |
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------/
Bill Campbell
: bi...@camco1.celestial.com (Bill Campbell) writes:
.....
: >Have you looked at /rdb? This is pretty flexible and cheap (under
: [...] >It's text based
: Perhaps I need to clarify what I meant by "text based", I meant "not X11
: based"- able to run on ASCII (text) terminals. The actual file formats
: the DB uses is unimportant.
/rdb is ascii based in that definition too.
: I called the vendor- the /rdb is a utility program which allows
: creation and manipulation of ASCII database files from a command line
: (one of my requirements is that the software is an OA type application
: which is completely menu driven). Alone, it is not an end-user type
: application, but more of a development tool.
I thought you were looking for development tools (or at least a dead
simple database).
: Other OA (Office Automation) type applications are ClockWise, WordPerfect,
: Lotus 123, CorelDraw, WP Office, Grammatik, stuff like that.
ClockWise happens to be based on /rdb :-). I find it to be a very
nice tool, well integrated into a Xenix/Unix environment.
Bill
--
INTERNET: bi...@Celestial.COM Bill Campbell; Celestial Software
UUCP: ...!thebes!camco!bill 8545 SE 68th Street
camco!bill Mercer Island, WA 98040; (206) 947-5591
SPEED COSTS MONEY -- HOW FAST DO YOU WANT TO GO?
Mark A. Davis
>Mark A. Davis (ma...@taylor.infi.net) wrote:
>: bi...@camco1.celestial.com (Bill Campbell) writes:
>: I called the vendor- the /rdb is a utility program which allows
>: creation and manipulation of ASCII database files from a command line
>: (one of my requirements is that the software is an OA type application
>: which is completely menu driven). Alone, it is not an end-user type
>: application, but more of a development tool.
>I thought you were looking for development tools (or at least a dead
>simple database).
No!!!!!!!!!! This would be an office automation tool for fairly computer
illiterate users to use ;)
>: Other OA (Office Automation) type applications are ClockWise, WordPerfect,
>: Lotus 123, CorelDraw, WP Office, Grammatik, stuff like that.
>ClockWise happens to be based on /rdb :-). I find it to be a very
>nice tool, well integrated into a Xenix/Unix environment.
You're right!!! It just remembered that Clockwise IS using /rdb.
ClockWise is a very very cool program. We use it here, at the Hospital, to
schedule just about everything. But Clockwise is the magic, not /rdb, to
my users...... (Clockwise is a good example because it is completely
menu driven, with pop-up menus, point and click, context sensitive help,
etc).
Thomas Sippel - Dau
In article <1994Oct20.1...@taylor.infi.net>, ma...@taylor.infi.net (Mark A. Davis) writes:
- This is turning into an annual posting.....
- What we are STILL looking for is a "personal database program" for lack
- of a better term. My users have need to enter simple info in database
- formats and be able to produce various reports and simple queries.
- Specs as follows-
-
- 1) Unix software, of course. Available for at least SCO. No non-native
- programs. Commercial or PD or Shareware. Not attached to groups
- of other REQUIRED applications (like applets).
- 2) Text based, completely menu driven, terminfo/cap compatible.
- 3) Point and click type menus with line draw boxes and arrow key usage.
- 4) NO COMMAND LINE commands like you would find in Dbase, Qbase, and Foxbase.
- 5) Ability to import and export files as ASCII
- 6) Ability to sort, select, and print/save custom reports and data entry
- screens. Ability to print labels.
- 7) Fully multi-user friendly, multi-printers, centralized administrative
- control over maintenance, security, printer setup, etc.
- 8) Ability to store these files in user's own home directories (like any
- other OA tool- IE word processing, spreadsheet, email), NOT
- centralized.
- 9) Relatively simple to use, without 6 trillion options and abilities.
-
- I would have thought such a basic Office Automation tool would certainly
- have been available by now for Unix. It is a staple on all kinds of other
- platforms in various incarnations.
It actually IS available, the file system as a data base, grep (and friends)
as a report writer, selection of application generators: sed, awk, perl ...
The problem is that a simple collection of text files will do most of
what you want. The point and click menu interface is the problem:
To write that kind of thing is regarded as boring by most programmers, and
at the same time it is terribly difficult to get right. Also, writing data
validation is a real downer. The effort needed to get anything worth looking
at means that anybody who starts on it ends up at a bloated package like the
ones you mention.
However, with AIX comes a "System Management Interface Tool" or smit,
which allows you to set up menus and tie commands to leaf options. It works
on ascii as well as X-windows screens, where it produces some cute graphics.
The actual commands you generate are things like grep + options, but the
interface and appropriate help is displayed (once you have the text files
set up), without the user having to see any of these commands.
On Silicon Graphics machines "Buttonfly" can be pressed into similar things,
with even cuter graphic effects.
Both programs come "Free" with their system, smit because it is the main
administrators interface, and buttonfly because it is a sales demo launcher.
But obviously they are bound to their home systems, and there is little
guarantee that they will be maintained when their original use is implemented
differently.
Also the toolchest (on SGI) and other menu generators for the various
X-Window managers come to mind.
Finally, khoros, avs, explorer and friends could be used, khoros is free,
but in the 500 Mbyte freeware league, and needs X.
Printing labels is a reasonably easy perl task, even if you leave it
to the user to define the field names from which the address is to be
constructed.
I guess a free format text file, with each record in a new file, in the form:
field: value
continuation value
....
next-field: value
is what you have in mind. Tremendously flexible, but needs much processing
to write complex reports....
Thomas
--
*** This is the operative statement, all previous statements are inoperative.
* email: cma...@ic.ac.uk (Thomas Sippel - Dau) (uk.ac.ic on Janet)
* voice: +44 171 594 6904 (day) fax: +44 171 594 6958
* snail: Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
Mark A. Davis
>Mark A. Davis (ma...@taylor.infi.net) wrote:
>: This is turning into an annual posting.....
>: What we are STILL looking for is a "personal database program" for lack
>: of a better term. My users have need to enter simple info in database
>: formats and be able to produce various reports and simple queries.
>: Specs as follows-
>Have you looked at /rdb? This is pretty flexible and cheap (under
[...] >It's text based
Perhaps I need to clarify what I meant by "text based", I meant "not X11
based"- able to run on ASCII (text) terminals. The actual file formats
the DB uses is unimportant.
I called the vendor- the /rdb is a utility program which allows
creation and manipulation of ASCII database files from a command line
(one of my requirements is that the software is an OA type application
which is completely menu driven). Alone, it is not an end-user type
application, but more of a development tool.
Other OA (Office Automation) type applications are ClockWise, WordPerfect,
Lotus 123, CorelDraw, WP Office, Grammatik, stuff like that.
Thanks for the suggestion, however.
Bill Campbell
: What we are STILL looking for is a "personal database program" for lack
: of a better term. My users have need to enter simple info in database
: formats and be able to produce various reports and simple queries.
: Specs as follows-
Have you looked at /rdb? This is pretty flexible and cheap (under
$300.00 for the base version, but I don't know what the user limit is
on that). There's also a perl version of /rdb available which is
free. My partner, Ray Jones, isn't in yet to give me full info on
this, but he's been using /rdb for years and loves it.
It's text based and maintains its data in flat ascii files with
variable length fields and a very simple format (basically tab
delimited fields with two header lines that name the fields).
The vendor for this is:
Revolutionary Software
131 Rathburn Way
Santa Cruz CA 95062-1035
(408) 429-6229 FAX NUMBER (408) 427-0342
I just put the perl version that I have (which may be out of date) in
ftp.celestial.com:/pub/perlrdb-2.5j.tar.gz
Mark A. Davis
>In article <1994Oct20.1...@taylor.infi.net>, ma...@taylor.infi.net (Mark A. Davis) writes:
>- This is turning into an annual posting.....
>The problem is that a simple collection of text files will do most of
>what you want. The point and click menu interface is the problem:
>To write that kind of thing is regarded as boring by most programmers, and
>at the same time it is terribly difficult to get right. Also, writing data
>validation is a real downer. The effort needed to get anything worth looking
>at means that anybody who starts on it ends up at a bloated package like the
>ones you mention.
But that is exactly the kind of package needed for typical users on
real-world systems. We use WordPerfect for wordprocessing, not a complex
combination of vi, grep, perl, sh, lp, pr, sed, etc.... the same would
need to be true for a personal DB program. Such user interfaces always
are very rigid and inflexible; but that it what is needed for users who
are not paid to be programmers and just need to get some simple DB tasks
done without spending 100's of hours learning command-line based tools.
>I guess a free format text file, with each record in a new file, in the form:
> field: value
> continuation value
> ....
> next-field: value
>is what you have in mind. Tremendously flexible, but needs much processing
>to write complex reports....
No, I don't care what format the databases are in. We don't need much
flexibility at all- just the opposite. We need a package which is not
command line oriented, which greatly limits what can be done, and something
which is user friendly. A person who understands wordprocessing and
spreadsheeting but has never touched a shell or command line tools should
be able to set up a new DB, index it, and interactively create a report
from it in a few minutes. Think of the average user, who has a hard
time sending Email even with fancy menu-driven tools.....
Thanks for the interest..... the quest continues......
Stephan Zielinski
>A person who understands wordprocessing and
>spreadsheeting but has never touched a shell or command line tools should
>be able to set up a new DB, index it, and interactively create a report
>from it in a few minutes.
That is a product specification that I don't think will be meetable
until we develop artificial intelligence. I cannot imagine an
interface amazing enough to empower even the average 4-year-degree CS
bozo to do that.
A few hours-- yes. A few minutes-- no.
Call me a cynic.
--
Stephan Zielinski szielins%dvl...@us.oracle.com
Pyramid OSx & DC/OSx. Sequent DYNIX/ptx. IBM AIX. HP/UX. SGI IRIX.
My brain hurts.
Mark A. Davis
> ma...@taylor.infi.net (Mark A. Davis) writes:
>>A person who understands wordprocessing and
>>spreadsheeting but has never touched a shell or command line tools should
>>be able to set up a new DB, index it, and interactively create a report
>>from it in a few minutes.
>That is a product specification that I don't think will be meetable
>until we develop artificial intelligence. I cannot imagine an
>interface amazing enough to empower even the average 4-year-degree CS
>bozo to do that.
>A few hours-- yes. A few minutes-- no.
>Call me a cynic.
Well, OK, maybe I exaggerated a bit :)
almo...@news.delphi.com
I share your frustration and I think I know what you're looking for. Is
the feature set of Filemaker Pro on the Macintosh it? I find it is a tool
that someone who has never seen a database before can sit down with and
build a personal database and print a report in 30 minutes or so. All
menu driven, user friendly, bullet-proof, etc. Now if only it ran on
UNIX!!!
Regards,
Dave Mandelkern
AlmondSeed Software Inc.
David McCabe
Mark A. Davis <ma...@taylor.infi.net> wrote:
>
>No, I don't care what format the databases are in. We don't need much
>flexibility at all- just the opposite. We need a package which is not
>command line oriented, which greatly limits what can be done, and something
>which is user friendly. A person who understands wordprocessing and
>spreadsheeting but has never touched a shell or command line tools should
>be able to set up a new DB, index it, and interactively create a report
>from it in a few minutes. Think of the average user, who has a hard
>time sending Email even with fancy menu-driven tools.....
>
Exactly, and we have about 35 of those users here. And I don't
think there is one that understands how to index properly. I am
constantly getting questions about why their queries return the data
in an order they don't want. For example, a "list all clients" would
show the clients listed by client-no, since that is the primary index.
I say, tell the query to do the list by name if that is what you want,
and they say "But I don't understand that. Can you do it for me?"
So all of our queries have to be coded to ask the user what index
they want to use, in a manner they can understand. Like "List by name,
number, alpha-code, company name, or other?". And then they want to
know why their once-a-year query based on an "other" field is so slow.
"Oh, that is because there is no index defined for that field." "Why
not?" "Because, when I designed that table in the database, nobody
told me they wanted that field indexed, and even if you had, for a
once a year query, I am not going to waste db space for an index." "Oh
well that sucks. Why can't these damn computers do what I want, and
faster than the speed of light?" (under my breath so they don't hear
me) "Well, why don't you go back to doing it by hand and see how long
it takes?" :) (and I won't even go into the common question about why
a character field index shows data in a "bizzare" way, because they
don't even know what ASCII is, never mind trying to understand that an
ASCII order is different than alphabetical)
These are average users here, so I don't think a product exists that
would be able to do what you want, for our users, anyway. Now I realize
that this is just a lack of proper education, but I have tried to have
an education course setup for the users, and guess what? If it ain't
on company time, no-one shows up! (And for politacl reasons, it can't
be on company time) Never mind that if they understand some basic
principles like directory structure, HOME dirs, etc, they could be much
better at their job, they want everything done for them when it comes to
computer work. (Hell, I have to set up shell scripts to clean up their
HOME dirs on a periodical basis, based on the age of files)
My point is that there is no tool that is going to be easy to use
for a user that has a hard time sending email with a menu-driven
interface, even when that interface has a line of text that shows what
the current menu selection is going to do, until that user understands
the basics of email and what is involved. And the same applies to any
tool, and gets even more complex for a database, whether personal or
enterprise wide.
Some of our users want a personal database, but don't realize that
they have one, built into Office Portfolio. It is very simple, basically
a telephone book type dbase, (but that is all they want, or so they
tell me) but they don't even take the time to learn what the "Add Edit
Delete Find Print etc." menu does for them. And we even bought Office
Portfolio pocket references for everybody, and how many do you think
use them? :)
So if I did find an "easy to use personal database", who do you
think is going to have to go around to each user and set it up for them?
Sorry for the ranting, and I hope I didn't upset anybody! :)
--
David McCabe PROGRESS Programmer/UNIX SysAdmin Phone: (514) 676 6644
Rampart Partitions St-Hubert Quebec Canada Fax: (514) 676 1004
p...@rampart.rco.qc.ca
Mark A. Davis
>In article <1994Oct26.1...@taylor.infi.net>,
>Mark A. Davis <ma...@taylor.infi.net> wrote:
>>
>>No, I don't care what format the databases are in. We don't need much
>>flexibility at all- just the opposite. We need a package which is not
>>command line oriented, which greatly limits what can be done, and something
>>which is user friendly. A person who understands wordprocessing and
>>spreadsheeting but has never touched a shell or command line tools should
>>be able to set up a new DB, index it, and interactively create a report
>>from it in a few minutes. Think of the average user, who has a hard
>>time sending Email even with fancy menu-driven tools.....
>>
> Exactly, and we have about 35 of those users here. And I don't
>think there is one that understands how to index properly. I am
[...]
> My point is that there is no tool that is going to be easy to use
>for a user that has a hard time sending email with a menu-driven
>interface, even when that interface has a line of text that shows what
>the current menu selection is going to do, until that user understands
>the basics of email and what is involved. And the same applies to any
>tool, and gets even more complex for a database, whether personal or
>enterprise wide.
I disagree. A perfect analogy is comparing vi or troff to using WordPerfect.
Most full-blown data base management languages are vi or troff.
A personal database manager is WordPerfect. There is a big difference is
the philosophy of the software.
> Some of our users want a personal database, but don't realize that
>they have one, built into Office Portfolio. It is very simple, basically
>a telephone book type dbase, (but that is all they want, or so they
>tell me) but they don't even take the time to learn what the "Add Edit
>Delete Find Print etc." menu does for them. And we even bought Office
>Portfolio pocket references for everybody, and how many do you think
>use them? :)
Not sure what Office Portfolio is, but it sounds interesting... perhaps
a bit too primative. (menu driven and reduced functionality doesn't
necessarily mean downright featureless :) )
> So if I did find an "easy to use personal database", who do you
>think is going to have to go around to each user and set it up for them?
> Sorry for the ranting, and I hope I didn't upset anybody! :)
Nope- all feedback is good. I can understand your frustration. We have
similar frustrations here- with lack of good, simple tools, or lack of
education & training resources, or both.
As an update- I have been talking to people at WordPerfect Corp, and they
may decide to port their mainstreet suite of apps to Unix. This might
be what we are waiting for. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with those
apps, so I can't tell.... yet. At least there is hope!