Just like in MS Access creating tables can be an interesting experience. the developers of OpenOffice have tried very hard to make the experience with OpenOffice Base as much as is possible without stepping over the line into something that is actionable like MS Access. We already discussed in other Post how to make a database with OpenOffice, now we are going to discuss making tables the easy way after the break.
With a database document open select Tables from the object selector on the left of the window. In the tasks pane select “Use Wizard to create Table.” The Wizard Dialog opens showing you the various tables and fields it has. This is very similar to MS Access.
Go through the various Tables and select the fields that you want in your table. Fields in a table should be about the entity being modeled in the table. Go through the rest of the Wizard. You can accept the default data types for now.
I do want to talk about the primary key. This is the field that uniquely identifies the entity in the table. For an Employee, that might be the employee ID field. Usually this can be a incremental field, but it is a unique field. No two records can have the same Employee ID.
When you are finished you can have the wizard make the table. If you want to know the innards of the table then you can edit it from the list of tables in the database window. When you edit the table you will see the table design window. Here you will see the fields and their data types. You can make changes here, but that is a subject for another post.
The above screen shot is the design document for the Employees Table. Notice the Key Icon next to EmployeeID. That is the primary key.
This has been a quick how to on using the Table Wizard to create Tables in OpenOffice. Soon I will be presenting the full and complete field reference post.
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