Database Project April 2009

The Django project was not left in a state to make it easy for others to carry on with.

To move forward Patrick Chan, Michael Cassidy and I have been looking at the following database solutions: Glom a Gnome project (GPL License) and Base in Open Office ( GNU Lesser General Public Licence), neither solution is web based. Google Base was also mentioned however any content is for public display so this would not be suitable for our client database.

We decided Glom came closest to meeting our requirements for the following reasons.

Glom

Glom has high-level features such as relationships, lookups, related fields,
related records, calculated fields, drop-down choices, searching,
reports, users and groups. It has Numeric, Text, Date, Time, Boolean, and Image field types. 

Glom is built using gtkmm, which is the C++ wrapper for GTK+. It uses the Document/View model from Bakery, and its Document_XML subclass uses the libxml++ C++ XML parser. PostgreSQL is the database backend.

Michael C implemented a Glom database in Ubuntu 8.10 using a schema made from the 'Application Form' we give clients and the computer description fields from our 'Disclaimer Form'.  This design matches phase one of the Django Project.  It has one month's worth of cbv data in it.

Base  - Open Office

Base is part of the Open Office suite.  Base in Open Office 3 allows the creation and manipulation of 
databases and the building of forms and reports to provide easy access to data for end-users. As
with Access, Base is able to work as a front-end to a variety of database systems, including Access 
databases (JET), ODBC data sources, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Written in Java

Patrick C implemented an Open Office Base in Ubuntu 8.10  version Office 3.  He also used a schema made from the 'Application Form' we give clients and the computer description fields from the 'Disclaimer Form'.  This design also nearly phase one of the Django Project. 

Glom or Base

Patrick's feedback is that although the actual Base database was easy to build. The reporting system was immature, there weren't different levels of user access (important) and documentation on the project is almost non existent. Although it has some nice features it it not mature enough for our project. There didn't seem to be much recent activity on the Base developers list.

Glom in comparison allows different levels of user access, has reporting and has had several releases this year and some documentation.  

Glom Tests

We entered one months data into Glom and then conducted these tests:

1. Access from within Computerbank.  Login is available from any Computerbank computer connected to our network.  No web access although there are some community developers working on this.
2. Two or more people can work on this database at the same time.  Tests still to be conducted to see what happens if two users are editing the same fields.
3. Developer and Operator and Viewer access: Yes.  Allows only one developer log in at any time.
4. Ease of input: Data input easy, each field saved automatically. However after some usability testing (thanks Allan) we may add some refinements such as drop down choices to some fields.
5. Ease of search:  It searches well - but is very slow.  Accessing the search button is clumsy.
6. Speed: Using the Find or Search button with one months data in the database was very slow.  We are investigating this.  So far this is the only problem we have found with this solution.
7. Reports it has the ability to allow a number of reports such as a monthly report.
8. Printing.  It has a cumbersome interface for a printed report.  We have tested a receipt.  If needed a receipt could be printed out for a customer if the data was entered in at purchase time.  To make this a possibility the computers would need to be entered as they arrived in the shop.  Tests need to be done for this possibility.