[plug] ZDNet Australia News & Tech OS SCO takes Linux to Murdoch Univers ity (fwd)

[Jeff Williams]

James Elliott wrote:

>Maybe I was a bit quick and glib with my terms.  There are many "flat"
>databases out there, and that was what I meant to exclude.
>
>Sure there are other relational databases, but if you were limited to a 13
>week course and wanted to teach something that Management had at least heard
>about and is readily available, I think Access and Oracle are two very good
>examples of different ends of the user scale.
>
>Every network I have been involved in setting up and maintaining, mainly
>nickel mines and schools, have Access and also software like Surpac which
>you will find on every mine site, and which is based on Access ... so,
>despite the aversion to Windows, my training in Access has been very useful
>.... AND ... I don't think it is the sort of thing that would be easy to
>self-teach.  Some of the ones you listed might have been interesting to
>learn, but so far I have not come across them.
>
Access is a nice form designer and database interface, but after dealing with several corruptions and problems with multiuser access I would have to say that it is an evil backend. It's also not that easy to move you data out to a better backend after. I would really recommend looking at some of the other databases being mentioned such as postgres. Most have ODBC drivers so you can still use Access as a front end, but get all the power, reliability and portibility or a real backend.

Jeff

-- 
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that can do binary
arithmetic and those that can't.