Hi,

I'm exploring ways to interact with postgresql through a GUI. I'm in a
Debian testing system (AMD64) and have found very few options. I really
like pgadmin for the administrative tasks with postgresql, but I'm looking
for something for day to day data entry, querying, and report generation.
I come from an M$ Access background, where I was used to clicking around
for these tasks. Openoffice.org does seem to have similar functionality,
but I haven't been able to set it up to work with postgresql. I would
appreciate some suggestions from other postgresql/pgadmin users. Thanks.


Cheers,

--
Seb


---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@postgresql.org so that your
message can get through to the mailing list cleanly

Seb wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm exploring ways to interact with postgresql through a GUI. I'm in a
> Debian testing system (AMD64) and have found very few options. I really
> like pgadmin for the administrative tasks with postgresql, but I'm looking
> for something for day to day data entry, querying, and report generation.
> I come from an M$ Access background, where I was used to clicking around
> for these tasks. Openoffice.org does seem to have similar functionality,
> but I haven't been able to set it up to work with postgresql. I would
> appreciate some suggestions from other postgresql/pgadmin users. Thanks.
>

If you're used to MS Access, why not use it? Just set up an ODBC source
to point to Postgres and use Access like you would with any other database.

-Dan


---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives?

http://archives.postgresql.org

On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:49:59 -0700,
Dan Harris <fbsd@drivefaster.net> wrote:

[...]

> If you're used to MS Access, why not use it? Just set up an ODBC source
> to point to Postgres and use Access like you would with any other
> database.

I moved away from that malicious software (fortunately) and, as I said,
I'm in Debian testing (AMD64) now. But apparently it's possible to do the
same thing you suggest with Openoffice.org. This is not going smoothly
though, as the openoffice.org crashes before I visit the "tables" section
of their GUI. I'm sure my odbc setup is correct, as I can connect to a
postgresql database using the tools available in unixodbc. Another tool I
tried is rekall (available as Debian package also), but it's also crashing
and doesn't provide the flexibility that Openoffice.org offers. What
gives?


--
Seb


---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend

Seb написа:
> On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:49:59 -0700,
> Dan Harris <fbsd@drivefaster.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> If you're used to MS Access, why not use it? Just set up an ODBC source
>> to point to Postgres and use Access like you would with any other
>> database.
>
> I moved away from that malicious software (fortunately) and, as I said,
> I'm in Debian testing (AMD64) now. But apparently it's possible to do the
> same thing you suggest with Openoffice.org. This is not going smoothly
> though, as the openoffice.org crashes before I visit the "tables" section
> of their GUI. I'm sure my odbc setup is correct, as I can connect to a
> postgresql database using the tools available in unixodbc. Another tool I

Have you tried the SDBC driver
(http://dba.openoffice.org/drivers/postgresql/)?

> tried is rekall (available as Debian package also), but it's also crashing
> and doesn't provide the flexibility that Openoffice.org offers. What
> gives?



--
Milen A. Radev


---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings

On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 10:10:07 -0700,
Dan Harris <fbsd@drivefaster.net> wrote:

[...]

> Not sure which software is malicious, Access or Windows? But if it's
> Windows, at least you could run it in free VMware server ( I have to do
> that sometimes ).

That would be Microsoft, so I'm including all their software in that
category, but I guess this may veer OT here ;-)


> Other than that, as far as I know, there is nothing that comes close to
> Access' functionality as a native app for *nix. OpenOffice talks a big
> game but when you really start trying to use it for database stuff you
> realize that it's pretty hamstrung compared to Access.

You're right, unfortunately. Pretty much everything I've tried in *nix is
not very practical at the moment (I also tried kexi recently, and it's
also crashing before I can do anything with it and postgresql). So it
seems one is still bound to M$ Access here. I will check VMware. Thanks.


Cheers,


--
Seb


---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 10:10:07 -0700,
Dan Harris <fbsd@drivefaster.net> wrote:

[...]

> Not sure which software is malicious, Access or Windows? But if it's
> Windows, at least you could run it in free VMware server ( I have to do
> that sometimes ).

Did you do this using unixodbc? Given that I'm certain that my unixodbc
stuff is working good, and I that also have Crossover working good, I'd
like to learn how to set an odbc from such emulators through ODBC.
Thanks for any further comments.


--
Seb


---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq

On Feb 22, 6:19 pm, m...@radev.net ("Milen A. Radev") wrote:
> Seb написа:
>
> > On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:49:59 -0700,
> > Dan Harris <f...@drivefaster.net> wrote:
>
> > [...]
>
> Have you tried the SDBC driver
> (http://dba.openoffice.org/drivers/postgresql/)?

I have successfully set up a connection from the latest OOo to
PostgreSQL with the SDBC driver. Setup took me some time, but it
worked alright. I would definitely chose the SDBC driver over ODBC,
but more importantly, I chose pgadmin and psql as tools for daily
database administration work. OOo via SDBC is pretty limited,
comparably slow and all in all not very mature. For what it's worth,
it's the closest to MS Access among the GUIs for PostgreSQL I have
seen.

Yeah, I used to work with MS Access, too, but completely quit a couple
of years ago. The Access interface has its strong points. I can,
however, confirm every last bit about "maliciousness" concerning the
company. I still get former clients who want me to work on their
Access databases. Recently, I have gone over to refuse without much
further elaboration.

Regards
Erwin

Am Donnerstag, 22. Februar 2007 schrieb Seb:
> Hi,
>
> I'm exploring ways to interact with postgresql through a GUI. I'm in a
> Debian testing system (AMD64) and have found very few options. I really
> like pgadmin for the administrative tasks with postgresql, but I'm looking
> for something for day to day data entry, querying, and report generation.
> I come from an M$ Access background, where I was used to clicking around
> for these tasks. Openoffice.org does seem to have similar functionality,
> but I haven't been able to set it up to work with postgresql. I would
> appreciate some suggestions from other postgresql/pgadmin users. Thanks.
>
>
> Cheers,

You could try knoda (www.knoda.org) and/or rekall (www.rekallrevealed.org).
Unless you don't want do more complicated things knoda could be a good choice
(but I don't know nothing about the report generator - I never used it). As
of my experience knoda seems to be a little buggy: For example if you try to
trigger some code in python from a combobox the program executes it twice.
But for simple purposes it should work.
I tried rekall in a very early stage (2 or 3 years ago) but as the layout of
texts in the different widgets on the screen wasn't that good, and as I
wanted to work with larger texts I changed to knoda. Now rekall seems to have
improved considerably and comes with a detailed manual.

Michael

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings

On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 19:54:13 +0100,
Michael Eschweiler <michael.eschweiler@t-online.de> wrote:

[...]

> You could try knoda (www.knoda.org) and/or rekall
> (www.rekallrevealed.org). Unless you don't want do more complicated
> things knoda could be a good choice (but I don't know nothing about the
> report generator - I never used it). As of my experience knoda seems to
> be a little buggy: For example if you try to trigger some code in python
> from a combobox the program executes it twice. But for simple purposes
> it should work. I tried rekall in a very early stage (2 or 3 years ago)
> but as the layout of texts in the different widgets on the screen wasn't
> that good, and as I wanted to work with larger texts I changed to
> knoda. Now rekall seems to have improved considerably and comes with a
> detailed manual.

Thanks, I should check the current state of knoda. Last time I tried it
~1 yr ago, it allowed only minimal functionality to interact with
PostgreSQL. Kexi invariably crashes in my system (AMD64) when doing
things with PostgreSQL. I tried rekall during the last few days, but it
crashes soon after connecting to a database. Some of these problems may
be happening only in AMD64. Indeed, Debian's Openoffice.org packages are
very recent, but are already more stable than the apps mentioned above.
However, it also crashes frequently during connections with PostgreSQL (or
MySQL) connections and, again, functionality is very limited.
Particularly, I'd like to have some GUI do something like M$ Access'
relationship.

In the meantime, I've also tried to figure out how to use my old *.mdb
files through ODBC directly. Basically, using unixODBC to connect to the
*.mdb from a *nix app (say GNU R for stats analysis). I've been using
Codeweavers' Crossover as I migrate things over to PostgreSQL, and this
plan seems possible:

http://www.codeweavers.com/support/d...er/config-odbc

although I haven't yet understood the last step of their configuration
guidelines.


--
Seb


---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at

http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 23:05:45 -0600,
Seb <spluque@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

> Last time I tried it ~1 yr ago, it allowed only minimal functionality to
> interact with PostgreSQL.

I meant MySQL, not PostgreSQL back then.


--
Seb


---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
match