Re: [NOVICE] absolute novice wanting knowledgeable opinion about front end

Phil,

PostgreSQL is a server side database, so not quite clear what you mean by not mixing front with back.  Regardless of what you choose for your front-end, its not going to be completely tied to PostgreSQL.

It might be a good stepping stone to stick with your Access front end and just switch all your tables to linked PostgreSQL tables especially if you have a lot of time invested in writing Access functions.

For the most part you can use all the functions you have written in MS Access if you stick with Linked Tables.  If you use pass-thrus or postgresql views then you can take advantage of PostgreSQL specific functionality. You can mix and match all 3 strategies (linked tables, linked views, sql pass-thru) in the same MS Access database.

On top of that you inherit PostgreSQL ACID, cascade update/delete, network efficiency (e..g passing statements along the pipe instead of index reads) security stuff even with linked tables.  We have a bunch of applications we have written that use PostgreSQL as a backend and MS Access as a front-end.  And also a bunch that use SQL Server as back end and MS Access as front-end.  They actually work well together and don't suffer from the network issues that a pure MS Access solution does (e.g. 15 clients, slow over slow network etc) . 


Thanks,
Regina


-----Original Message-----
From: Phil [mailto:philbaseless-postgres@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sun 9/28/2008 11:42 PM
To: Obe, Regina; Tom Lane
Cc: pgsql-novice@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [NOVICE] absolute novice wanting knowledgeable opinion about front end

This was interesting and the comments in the article about Access's ease of use
being a bain or boon is appropriate. But it made it easy toy to target ourselves
and not have to muck thru a generic db app.

I'm not planning to mix front and back end's.

So far I found report generators and sql builders.  Form builders will be more
difficult to find.  The ones in MSaccess integrate a lot of their GUI app
features and are very powerful. For example columns can be greyed out or not
depending on content.  The forms in Access are often used to make up for it's
lack of data security that would probably be handled by postgres's ACID
compliance.  I need to educate myself on ACID compliance and other SQL that is
new and improved over Msaccess spec.

I see I would have to rewrite a lot of Access functions also.

What would be nice is if someone had a sample DB and frontend that mimic's
Access's 'Northwind traders' sample.

Anyway thanks for the replies from everyone.


>> (Anyone want to start putting together a page on wiki.postgresql.org
>> about Access compatibility?)
>
>> regards, tom lane
>
> If it helps we wrote a quick one.  I think its already listed on the
> wiki too.
>
> http://www.postgresonline.com/journal/index.php?/archives/24-Using-MS-Access-with-PostgreSQL.html
>
> Hope that helps,
> Regina
>
>
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