Re: A minimal relational database in Debian?

[<tomas@tuxteam.de>]

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On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 07:17:56AM -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:
> The last time I needed a relational database my employer was using
> dBaseII on a MS-DOS machine.

Hm. A strange "relational" database indeed...

> What is a functional equivalent in the Debian repository?
> 
> I looked at at LibreOffice Base. It was unusable as its "help"
> system provided no intrinsic way to increase fonts to a legible
> size.

LibreOffice Base is, AFAIK *not* a relational database, but just
a -possibly graphical- user interface to one. Relational databases,
as I know them, have no "fonts", for example.

Sorry for sounding somewhat snarky, but I'm trying to help you refine
your requirements. What is it exactly what you are looking for?

 - some kind of dBase clone (in a very loose sense), i.e. some
   GUI where you can click together small data-centric GUI apps?
   "Relational", perhaps "concurrent multi-user" not so important?

   I have to defer to others in this one. But perhaps you might
   want to look into gambas (for which you'd need a "real" database
   beneath, see below)

 - a "relational" [1] database with transactions, SQL, perhaps some
   concurrent multi-user capabilities?

   Here, you could do significantly worse than PostgreSQL. Highly
   recommended. Or, if you want to embed it into applications and
   don't care about multi-user (and many other niceties), you
   might want to look into sqlite. Then there is MariaDB (which
   was formerly spelled MySQL, but Oracle). Others will disagree,
   but my take is: don't if you don't have to.

(The first class of applications might contain one of the second
class as embedded data store -- or it might not).

What does you use case look like, approximately?

Regards

[1] Yeah: absolute purists will say most SQL databases out there
   are not relational, and they'd be right

- -- tomás
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