This is a post that is a little more detail about OpenOffice Base databases. If you were looking for a little more information about how much Base can replace MS Access you’ve come to the right place. I discussed that issue in this post. This post is a little more about the datatypes that you can make fields. I discuss this after the break.
OpenOffice(NeoOffice) base is a product that uses any database engine as it’s database. If you have it make the database for you as I showed you in this video post, then you are using the hsqldb database engine which OpenOffice installs. This is one of the reasons that OpenOffice requires Java. Hsqldb is an open source database engine completely built with the Java programming language. It is a full scale database engine and works either as an embedded system, or as a server in an enterprise configuration.
Datatypes are presented with the enterprise data type names, and a more friendly name along side. This is to help those who might blanch at a varchar datatype, but Text is okay. Bit might be too much, but boolean is okay.
To create a table without the wizard you need to open the database file and select the table object selector. Then click on the create table using design view. You will see a design view with the field name and the datatype column next to that. Give the field a name and then select the datatype that you want to use. Remember that if you want to do math with the field that you have to use a number type.
The easy datatype names do make it easier to understand what is going on in a table’s design. You can enter any table’s design by selecting the table whose design you wish to see. Right click and select edit from the popup menu. The table’s design window will open and you can make any changes to the design you wish. You can set a limit of the size of some fields by editing th eproperties for the field in the design view window.
That’s the Basics of the design view for tables in OpenOffice Base.
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