Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 27, 2004 09:22 PM
They make special note on the cost of migrating a Microsoft Access database to OpenOffice, but fail to mention the costs associated with upgrading a Microsoft Access database even with their own software. Free Software and Open Source databases are typically available at no cost, so the money would be spent on the actual 'liberation' of the data. Microsoft will require you to purchase licensing for SQL Server, and businesses will still have to pay for the migration of the data.
the thing is the OpenOffice suites does not have a database at all. I believe StarOffice has something called Abacus and there is some free or open-source databases out there (PostgreSQL and mySQL until they changed their license) but these are not part of OpenOffice. This seems a major weakness in OpenOffice to me: the abscence of a simple relational database, easy to install and with some (but not all) of the features of the big ones. I know that many people hate Access 'kuz its too primitive' but look at the small business environment: do they run Oracle or DB2? Nope - most of the time they use Access and this is something which our community sorely lacks for the time being.
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(rotten) apples and oranges?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 27, 2004 09:22 PMthe thing is the OpenOffice suites does not have a database at all. I believe StarOffice has something called Abacus and there is some free or open-source databases out there (PostgreSQL and mySQL until they changed their license) but these are not part of OpenOffice.
This seems a major weakness in OpenOffice to me: the abscence of a simple relational database, easy to install and with some (but not all) of the features of the big ones. I know that many people hate Access 'kuz its too primitive' but look at the small business environment: do they run Oracle or DB2? Nope - most of the time they use Access and this is something which our community sorely lacks for the time being.
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