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Re: Looking for an inventory software which is free software and not IT-centric



On Wed, 19 Feb 2020 02:59:45 +0100
Linux-Fan <Ma_Sys.ma@web.de> wrote:


> Current alternatives if I do not find anything better:
> 
>  * Try to design some forms with Libreoffice Base.
>    I know that I tried that once already and it did not go so well.

Even today, Base is extremely buggy, though at least it connects
reliably and natively to SQL servers now. I broke with it when one day
(in sid) the Report Writer no longer worked at all, and I needed to get
an invoice out urgently. A bit of frantic work with PHP and FPDF solved
that, and I've tidied it up a bit since, and still use it for invoice
printing. I still reluctantly use Base for very simple jobs.

>  * Re-Write my program. Would a database make more sense or
>    might it be better to have a single CSV-style table?
> 

Single-table (flat file) databases are very simple, but very limited.
For this application, you will add bells and whistles as time goes by,
and a relational database is pretty much vital. I was once given a job
to do, and MS Works to do it with. I gave up after an hour and started
to learn Access, there was so much that couldn't be done with the
single-table 'database' in Works. MySQL/MariaDB are pretty easy to get
going, after which it is trivial to create and modify databases. There
are things like SQLite, to avoid using a real SQL server, but I've
never seen the need. My little netbook runs MariaDB and Apache2 with
PHP7 quite happily, though I wasn't able to achieve it on my Android
tablet. Not enough memory.

*The* frontend application for this kind of job is still MS Access, but
that will never exist in Linux, and it's generally a bit too complex to
run properly on Wine, uses too many unusual MS libraries. I've done some
database work in the past in Delphi (Delphi 3, it was that long ago),
for which Lazarus is a reasonable substitute, but it's much more work
than Access, especially if you've never used Pascal. Good for form
building, though.

These days I do most database work in PHP and Apache, and though there
are simpler web servers that will run with PHP, there is much more web
documentation for Apache. I still mostly do hand coding. I have had a go
at Laravel (and Cake-PHP in the distant past) and while I can see the
attraction of frameworks for professional web developers, it doesn't
really cut down the work for small single projects.

-- 
Joe


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