user interface to Base

users
#1

Hi all,
I am a new user of LibreOffice Base and a beginner in database creation.

I believe that I have figured out how to create my simple database of tables and forms.

My question is "Is there a friendly, visual (GUI) thing for retrieving information from the database?" I don't want to require anyone to write SQL code or use the query design view provided by Base.

It is possible that the database might be placed on a web server if that makes a difference.

Thanks,

Bob

#2

Hi Bob,

I haven't played much with Base, but there are at least two ways of
viewing the stored information that I know of.

The first is to create a form. I know you can set the form so that you
cannot add, modify or delete any data, which in effect means the form
will be for viewing only.

The second way is to create a report. It really depends on what you
want people to be able to see as to which would suit you better. Forms
are more for viewing a single table one record at a time, whereas
reports are more for generating a listing of information from the
database, possibly from multiple joined tables, and usually only a
subset of the data for each record (but again that depends on how much
data there is), and possibly grouped, with subtotals and stuff.

Play a little and see if one of these two don't meet your needs,
otherwise feel free to provide a little more details about what you
want to achieve and someone here might come up with a better way.

Of course there are other ways outside of LO, like custom frontends,
possibly web frontends, but I'm not sure if you need that sort of
thing.

Paul

#3

Greetings,
Paul, you left out one more way (#3?) to look at the data. Open the database table and read the data like a spreadsheet.
Speaking of spreadsheets, you can link the database as a data source to a calc spreadsheet. I rarely do that, but when Report Builder was too slow to use a couple years ago, I did experiment with the Calc spreadsheet. As a result, I am glad the devs got RB running faster.
HTH.
Girvin Herr