[seek-dev] Desktop SQL Tools is MS Office (std) and Open Office (RE: SQL db candidates for data query)

[Bertram Ludaescher]

Steve:

Thanks -- this is interesting. Indeed, in addition to other tools that
might be already in the making, your suggested use of eg Open Office
could work nicely with Kepler in a "loosely coupled mode"...

Bertram

Steve Tekell writes:
 > This may be a bit of a tangent, but I just wanted to point out that if
 > someone just wanted a way to load a text file or other data files and run
 > SQL queries against then there is a way to do this without writing any
 > application.
 > 
 > That is, both Microsoft Office and Open Office provide this functionality.
 > Moreover, they provide visual query designers as an alternative to writing
 > the raw SQL.
 > 
 > This might not be useful for anything that you are trying to do now, but
 > Open Office is free, so it's possible.  And it might come in handy for
 > something.
 > 
 > I haven't worked with this in Open Office so much, but open a spreadsheet,
 > go to Tools -> Data Sources and You will see that you can choose MySQL,
 > ODBC, JDBC, Text and more.  Then you can use the designer to create/execute
 > SQL queries and toggle between design view and raw SQL.
 > 
 > Also, in the past, I have integrated desktop office apps into an enterprise
 > application so that users could have sophisticated ways of manipulating data
 > without me having to try futility to do provide an equally robust GUI in a
 > web app.  We would just write scripts that would get/submit data to/from the
 > enterprise application from within Office.  That is, weren't using Office to
 > connect directly to a database, but rather interfacing with our business
 > logic tier.  You could use XML, formatted text, serialized objects, etc.
 > 
 > Anyway, just wanted to point out this functionality.  I think a lot people
 > may not know it's there, especially in Open Office.  They assume you need to
 > get Star Office or MS Office Pro which include their own databases to get
 > this functionality.
 > 
 > Steve
 > 
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