This video is in response to a comment I received asking whether LibreOffice base could be used to create a database for a personal Training business, I took it as a challenge to see what could be done with only a small amount of code and this is what I created as a proof of concept database, let me know what you think in the comments below.
A very good example. I have to do something similar for my daughter's organisation which I will base on your work. I have also learnt a few new bits of functionality from your video as I only had a rudimentary knowledge of LibreOffice Base. In a past life I was an ABAP (SAP) programmer. Thank you.
This excellent tutorial takes a form-forward approach, which is novel and helpful to a guy whose experience of database is a dozen years of SQL Server.
Thank you for this video! Your instructions are clean, clear, and I love both your voice and your humor. I'm trying to self-learn this from scratch to help me and other owners self-training service dogs for generating training plans and logging them much more easily than what's available right now. You filled in a lot of holes that my unskilled poking had found lol. THanks again
Hi Yash Glad it was helpful!, I've got a complete LibreOffice base playlist here, If you're looking for more LibreOffice stuff. th-cam.com/video/k6XUpvYwuPg/w-d-xo.html
Thank you Sean for this great Tutorial. I prefer LibreOffice Base over MS Access, mainly because of FOSS and multi platform usage. It reminds me somehow to the old dBase or DataEase days. Your videos help a lot, specially this one with sub-forms. Once you get the idea, you can easily adapt. If I may place a wish for a further video: please use that main/sub-form in your example and create a print button (including code) to have a simple report for each existing customer printed, maybe with a search button for a customer name/number search first. I always have difficulties in getting a report out of a main/sub-form printed. Thanks for your help. Great content. Regards. Patrick
Thanks Patrick, I'll have to look up how to print reports from base. Truth be told in all of my career as a contracting developer, mainly using Excel and Ms Access on client sites (usually large investment banks) I've hardly ever made stuff for printing, never a use case I needed. Generally I'd do my queries and create reports in Excel or as forms etc. But Yes I'll look into this, I can say now though that my guess is that you don't "print" the form or the output, what you have to do is design a report that's formatted how you like (say similar fields to the subform for example), then the report would execute the same sql query that got you your form report. But that's just me shooting from the hip right now. :-)
Hi Sean, thank you for your videos. I’m just starting out with Base and LibreOffice and looking forward to watching your videos. If I could just make one suggestion it would be to get rid of the echo. It makes listening a little difficult. But maybe that’s just me. Thanks again.
HI MIke, I think the echo's just you ;-), I've got a new out of camera view microphone, which I'll use for future videos (i.e. after the date of this comment) should reduce "splosive pop sounds".
@@BusinessProgrammer ...Hmmm? I suppose I'm not telling you anything you don't already know about mics, but what kind of mic are you (will you be) using--condenser, dynamic or ???. I use an inexpensive mic (Audio Technica 2100 dynamic), keep it close to my mouth, have a small room with zero sound dampening on the walls, and I get no echo. Also, with many other TH-cam tutorials, there isn't any echo effect. ...So ...maybe it ain't me! 😊 Maybe some of the other commenters have a different experience. Anyway, thank you for the tutorials. ...Been in love with MSWord since it was on a 360K floppy. (What's a floppy?, some might ask) After "upgrading?" from Office 2003 to 365, my long love affair with her is about to end!! sniff sniff, boo hoo!☹ haha
@@Mike-ny6sf I've got so many microphones it's not funny. I started off with the Audio Technica 2020 on a rode arm and found it picked up too much environmental noise. Switched to the good old blue yeti with a pop filter in front of it, but that picked up keyboard noise as it sat on my desk and the pop filter was a pain. then the rode nt-usb which is the one you see in front of my mouth in this video, I liked that because it's got a built-in pop filter, but don't like that it's stuck between me and the viewer finally, I've set up a rode videomic ntg (shotgun) amzn.to/3KTpoDs (affiliate link) just out of screen (centre top) but haven't yet produced any videos (just used it on zoom), I think this will produce the best sound and viewer experience I've been using it for nearly 3 months.
@@BusinessProgrammer It will be interesting to see how the shotgun mic works for you. I, too, don't like having a mic blocking my face and view. I tried a few low-end lapel mics, but they picked up a lot of noise. Maybe a higher-end lapel would work for me as I don't like being restricted in movement to a few inches side to side and to having to be so close to the mic. I have a soft, quiet voice with a lot of sibilance. Don't know if any mic would help with that. Tried de-essers plugins without much success. End up doing a lot of manual de-essing in Audacity--which is really a pain. Again, thanks for all your work you put into your tutorials
Great tnx for the tutorial. I m new to Libre office. Been searching how to calculate 2 Fields in a table, e.g. A1 * A2 = A3 and store the value of A3 in that table. Expanding this, I give a discount A4 (%) and deduct this and stored in a new field A5. tnx anyway.
Glad you found the video helpful, You would do the calculation that you've mentioned using either a SQL insert or an update query depending on the circumstances.
Sean, this is great. Thanks for the video & all the work. One thing seems to be missing: how about the standalone database search app, i.e. how do you use this database & what it looks like?
Hello Like your video. It’s great. I have created a database in LibreOffice Base. I imported data from a Calc spreadsheet. The database looks great. I created a form also. I cannot enter or remove data from the data base. It seems locked. In the table, there is no primary key. It seems locked. I cannot add a primary key. Any suggestions on enabling entering and removing data from the data base or adding a primary key.
Thanks Sean. I've learnt a lot from your video. It really help as a rookie like me. Just wondering if any chance to get the code of this training? Thanks again.
Have a look ath this video, using firebird server with LibreOffice base you can get an ODBC connector to the database so you should be able to connect via powerBI to your odbc datasource. th-cam.com/video/XVf6_l88JOs/w-d-xo.html
How to create a Combo Box filled with 2 fields from 2 different tables. Exemple "book loans" create Combo Box field in form with 2 costumers(2 tables differents): table 1: teachers and table 2: students(I need only columns Name), other situation 2 type books(2 tables differents): table 1: books didactic and table 2: books literary(I need only columns ID)? You can help me?
I like the way that LibreOffice Base works, but I think that I would need to "memorize" the syntax codes. That could be a problem to me because I intend to use other LibreOffice application programs. Otherwise, I want to like Base, as much as I love Microsoft Access 2021. What would you "tell" me?
Build a code library of frequently used functions i.e. make your own functions of frequently used tasks then you only need to worry about the structure of your functions, for example you could create a function such as getArrayFromSql where you pass in the sql as an argument. Then whenever you need to do that task just use that function. If you've got a lot of such functions when you forget syntax just look at your functions to remind yourself.
@@BusinessProgrammer Sean Johnson, you are sharper than you may feel! Your comment was well-written generously to me. Thank you for typing to me. Happy Keyboarding!
im about to get a 12 pound hammer and give it a good shot to my computer... I entered a [date] format with DD-MM-YYYY When i try to enter my birth date for a test, i got either en java error wrong date type or they set a ridiculous date like 30-12-1899 What the heck?? Can you help? thanks!!
Not yet Jon, but I've been working with mySql on and off for 20 years (personal projects) or so, either with PHP, Ajax (javascript php) or LibreOffice / Openoffice base and Microsoft Access connecting to it, so I do plan to do some in the future.
@@BusinessProgrammer Thank you for your replies. It's not often I get a reply back from someone of your caliber. I wish we had more time to chat, we have a lot in common. I was a test engineer, for several years, and learned to learn :) ... Jack of many trades and always wishing I was a master of ONE :). This particular structure I will modify for my own keeping track of BP and correspondence with the doctor(S) ... I've subscribed and watched some of your other videos and history .. double thumbs up for awesome work that you've shared. I pray the Lord will continue to bless you as you bless others with your gift He has given you :) 👍👍✨✨✔✔
@@jonlbs7 Thanks for your kind words Jon, don't underrate being a generalist, we may not get paid as much, but I think it might make us more interesting, at a minimum I find that it makes life more interesting for us. ;-)
Why is it that their is no basic feature to disable certain users from modifying the database settings. We can create all this other bling visually and make a very functional database but other than some crazy and complicated techniques with standalone forms you cannot restrict users from making a mess of your creation. It seems completely ridiculous this is not a standard feature.
Don’t forget Nasi, LibreOffice base is made by volunteers, it’s not meant to be enterprise grade. However I have two suggestions... 1 use a Split database (I’ve got two videos on this subject), that way you can always redeploy the master UI. 2 connect LO base to a MySQL database (also free), now you can put some enterprise level security into the database and redeploy your front end db after users have messed up their version. After telling them off, of course :-)
I gave up on your video because everything was going too fast. You may know in which direction you are going to move the cursor in order to pick a selection but I don't, therefore you often pick something and move on before I see where and what you are selecting.
I gave up too-- am using version 7.1 and with slight differences in layout I couldn't locate the 'form navigator' button. Besides, you dragged in some window from the right side of the video but whatever you did was covered by your own video thumbnail. I may come if I can't find another tutorial or use the help guide.
@@jbrodgers3551 Have a look at my LibreOffice base playlist, I have several videos on using base forms. My videos make it 100 times easier than the work I had to do to figure it out. So the answer's there, in one of my other videos if you can't find it in this one.
@@BusinessProgrammer I do agree with that but like could you slow down your steps and explain a little more on what you were doing cause some of the things you did when creating a form weren't very clear for me
@@kiratmangi5943 The following playlist covers all my LibreOffice base videos th-cam.com/video/k6XUpvYwuPg/w-d-xo.html and this video link here is one specifically about forms th-cam.com/video/R1sc8cfpqGI/w-d-xo.html I cover forms in more than one video so if you check them out you'll probably get more information. It's impossible to please everyone if I go too slow people won't watch either, so If I covered stuff in other videos I don't go super slow as you can find more detail in other videos.
Hi Nasi I don’t have a dog in that race, I’m not a “LibreOffice guy”, I’m a business Programmer guy ;-). I like LibreOffice because it’s free and cross platform. Base is the only desktop database that works on windows, Mac and Linux. Let’s face it though, not many business operate in Linux (for the desktop for non tech employees, no matter how good it isn’t). Yes I’m on windows (and Mac) most of my viewers use windows also. My channel is about getting things done not being geeky (although I am a little :-) ) I know you’re only joking, but I think it’s a point worth clarifying. It takes a lot of knowledge to get a Linux machine up and working and keeping it useful. I’m all about the struggle though brother ;-)
@@BusinessProgrammer you are right, and a good way to put it: Linux is more of a kit that requires you to put it together, then maintain your version on your own. Powerful, but not easy enough. I’m actually a full time Linux user. Windows is not manageable for what I do. Windows is easy on the surface, but becomes a serious problem real soon.
@@anndrake492 You're right, I've had PC's in the 90's and early 2000, went to Mac in late 2005 (used both though) and came back to PC in late 2018, working with OS-X/Unix is much easier than digging through Window 10 menus and permissions which I don't have the time to get on top of and will probably change with the next release, but prior to the Apple M1 chip you got more bang for your buck with Windows/Ryzen.
This video is in response to a comment I received asking whether LibreOffice base could be used to create a database for a personal Training business, I took it as a challenge to see what could be done with only a small amount of code and this is what I created as a proof of concept database, let me know what you think in the comments below.
A very good example. I have to do something similar for my daughter's organisation which I will base on your work. I have also learnt a few new bits of functionality from your video as I only had a rudimentary knowledge of LibreOffice Base. In a past life I was an ABAP (SAP) programmer. Thank you.
@@crichta Glad you found it helpful.
This excellent tutorial takes a form-forward approach, which is novel and helpful to a guy whose experience of database is a dozen years of SQL Server.
Thanks for the feedback Joshua, glad you liked it.
Quick, complete and clear. This is how any good tutorial should be. Thanks.
Glad you found it helpful, Ares, I'm working on minimising rambling ;-)
Thank you for this video! Your instructions are clean, clear, and I love both your voice and your humor. I'm trying to self-learn this from scratch to help me and other owners self-training service dogs for generating training plans and logging them much more easily than what's available right now. You filled in a lot of holes that my unskilled poking had found lol. THanks again
You are so welcome!
This video has exactly what I was looking for, and the presentation was very good. Thank you Sean.
You're very welcome!
Thanks for the amazing tutorial Sean. Its not easy finding a decent tutorial on Libre Office.
Hi Yash
Glad it was helpful!, I've got a complete LibreOffice base playlist here, If you're looking for more LibreOffice stuff.
th-cam.com/video/k6XUpvYwuPg/w-d-xo.html
Hello Sean, thanks for the tutorial, very helpfull. I really liked the Before Action Record date thing. Is there a way to add the time as well?
What an amazing tutorial. Kudos all around. I learned so much from this 25 min video.
Thanks for the feedback Ramsey, glad you liked it.
Your comment is exactly what I wanted to type. Thanks for the ditto!
Good job man. Thank you very much.
Thank you Sean for this great Tutorial. I prefer LibreOffice Base over MS Access, mainly because of FOSS and multi platform usage. It reminds me somehow to the old dBase or DataEase days. Your videos help a lot, specially this one with sub-forms. Once you get the idea, you can easily adapt. If I may place a wish for a further video: please use that main/sub-form in your example and create a print button (including code) to have a simple report for each existing customer printed, maybe with a search button for a customer name/number search first. I always have difficulties in getting a report out of a main/sub-form printed. Thanks for your help. Great content. Regards. Patrick
Thanks Patrick, I'll have to look up how to print reports from base.
Truth be told in all of my career as a contracting developer, mainly using Excel and Ms Access on client sites (usually large investment banks) I've hardly ever made stuff for printing, never a use case I needed.
Generally I'd do my queries and create reports in Excel or as forms etc.
But Yes I'll look into this, I can say now though that my guess is that you don't "print" the form or the output, what you have to do is design a report that's formatted how you like (say similar fields to the subform for example), then the report would execute the same sql query that got you your form report.
But that's just me shooting from the hip right now. :-)
How to import ms access dbase in libre. Acces dbase has all forms queries reports
Many thanks for this. Very useful indeed
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge. It was a joy watching this educational video with clear instructions.
Hi Ferdinand
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you very much for this. I was stuck with something and after watching this video the problem was solved.
Thank you
You’re welcome, Glad I could help.
Fantastic video. Thank you !! 👍👍😊😊✨✨
Glad you liked it Jon
Thank you! It was exactly what I was looking for! Liked!!!!
Glad you found it helpful Rob
Totally excellent! I have needed this for weeks. Thanks!
You're welcome Ann, Glad you found it helpful.
Hi Sean, thank you for your videos.
I’m just starting out with Base and LibreOffice and looking forward to watching your videos. If I could just make one suggestion it would be to get rid of the echo. It makes listening a little difficult. But maybe that’s just me. Thanks again.
HI MIke, I think the echo's just you ;-), I've got a new out of camera view microphone, which I'll use for future videos (i.e. after the date of this comment) should reduce "splosive pop sounds".
@@BusinessProgrammer ...Hmmm? I suppose I'm not telling you anything you don't already know about mics, but what kind of mic are you (will you be) using--condenser, dynamic or ???. I use an inexpensive mic (Audio Technica 2100 dynamic), keep it close to my mouth, have a small room with zero sound dampening on the walls, and I get no echo.
Also, with many other TH-cam tutorials, there isn't any echo effect. ...So ...maybe it ain't me! 😊
Maybe some of the other commenters have a different experience. Anyway, thank you for the tutorials. ...Been in love with MSWord since it was on a 360K floppy. (What's a floppy?, some might ask) After "upgrading?" from Office 2003 to 365, my long love affair with her is about to end!! sniff sniff, boo hoo!☹ haha
@@Mike-ny6sf I've got so many microphones it's not funny.
I started off with the Audio Technica 2020 on a rode arm and found it picked up too much environmental noise.
Switched to the good old blue yeti with a pop filter in front of it, but that picked up keyboard noise as it sat on my desk and the pop filter was a pain.
then the rode nt-usb which is the one you see in front of my mouth in this video, I liked that because it's got a built-in pop filter, but don't like that it's stuck between me and the viewer
finally, I've set up a rode videomic ntg (shotgun) amzn.to/3KTpoDs (affiliate link) just out of screen (centre top) but haven't yet produced any videos (just used it on zoom), I think this will produce the best sound and viewer experience I've been using it for nearly 3 months.
@@BusinessProgrammer It will be interesting to see how the shotgun mic works for you. I, too, don't like having a mic blocking my face and view. I tried a few low-end lapel mics, but they picked up a lot of noise. Maybe a higher-end lapel would work for me as I don't like being restricted in movement to a few inches side to side and to having to be so close to the mic. I have a soft, quiet voice with a lot of sibilance. Don't know if any mic would help with that. Tried de-essers plugins without much success. End up doing a lot of manual de-essing in Audacity--which is really a pain. Again, thanks for all your work you put into your tutorials
Great tutorial, and had really funny moments too! Thank you!
Glad you liked it, a little humour can make a dry subject more enjoyable ;-)
Thank you!
You're welcome!
Great tnx for the tutorial. I m new to Libre office. Been searching how to calculate 2 Fields in a table, e.g. A1 * A2 = A3 and store the value of A3 in that table. Expanding this, I give a discount A4 (%) and deduct this and stored in a new field A5. tnx anyway.
Glad you found the video helpful, You would do the calculation that you've mentioned using either a SQL insert or an update query depending on the circumstances.
Sean, this is great. Thanks for the video & all the work. One thing seems to be missing: how about the standalone database search app, i.e. how do you use this database & what it looks like?
This video/tutorial is well done!
Many Thanks
Thank you. Very very helpful to me.
Glad to hear that! All the best!
Hello
Like your video. It’s great.
I have created a database in LibreOffice Base. I imported data from a Calc spreadsheet. The database looks great. I created a form also.
I cannot enter or remove data from the data base. It seems locked.
In the table, there is no primary key. It seems locked. I cannot add a primary key. Any suggestions on enabling entering and removing data from the data base or adding a primary key.
One quick simple question Sir! If I am STILL in love with dBase 3+ will I like "Base"? :)
Probably not if your're into dbase, Base's power comes from SQL
Thanks Sean. I've learnt a lot from your video. It really help as a rookie like me. Just wondering if any chance to get the code of this training? Thanks again.
I guess I've got the code from go/115. Thanks anyway.
Sounds about right
No connector for Libre Office Base in Power BI :-( Will stick to Access.
Have a look ath this video, using firebird server with LibreOffice base you can get an ODBC connector to the database so you should be able to connect via powerBI to your odbc datasource.
th-cam.com/video/XVf6_l88JOs/w-d-xo.html
Ive Got a set of skills, and im going to use them if you dont...
Pedro, I'm not sure that I get your sense of humour, but it's good to have one... :-)
How to create a Combo Box filled with 2 fields from 2 different tables. Exemple "book loans" create Combo Box field in form with 2 costumers(2 tables differents): table 1: teachers and table 2: students(I need only columns Name), other situation 2 type books(2 tables differents): table 1: books didactic and table 2: books literary(I need only columns ID)? You can help me?
I like the way that LibreOffice Base works, but I think that I would need to "memorize" the syntax codes. That could be a problem to me because I intend to use other LibreOffice application programs. Otherwise, I want to like Base, as much as I love Microsoft Access 2021. What would you "tell" me?
Build a code library of frequently used functions i.e. make your own functions of frequently used tasks then you only need to worry about the structure of your functions, for example you could create a function such as getArrayFromSql where you pass in the sql as an argument.
Then whenever you need to do that task just use that function.
If you've got a lot of such functions when you forget syntax just look at your functions to remind yourself.
@@BusinessProgrammer Sean Johnson, you are sharper than you may feel! Your comment was well-written generously to me. Thank you for typing to me. Happy Keyboarding!
💙👌
I appreciate your thoughtfulness and your courtesy to reach out to me. Thank you for typing to me!
@@captainkeyboard1007 You're welcome!
Is it possible to have a table with the elements in a column?
Kinda.. but just for special circumstances, column 1 would be element name, column 2 element value.
im about to get a 12 pound hammer and give it a good shot to my computer...
I entered a [date] format with DD-MM-YYYY
When i try to enter my birth date for a test, i got either en java error wrong date type or they set a ridiculous date like 30-12-1899
What the heck?? Can you help? thanks!!
Excellent!
Thank you
Do you do any videos with MySQL ?
Not yet Jon, but I've been working with mySql on and off for 20 years (personal projects) or so, either with PHP, Ajax (javascript php) or LibreOffice / Openoffice base and Microsoft Access connecting to it, so I do plan to do some in the future.
Left off at 13:17 [ for my notes] to come back and finish :) 👍✨✨
@@BusinessProgrammer Thank you for your replies. It's not often I get a reply back from someone of your caliber. I wish we had more time to chat, we have a lot in common. I was a test engineer, for several years, and learned to learn :) ... Jack of many trades and always wishing I was a master of ONE :).
This particular structure I will modify for my own keeping track of BP and correspondence with the doctor(S) ...
I've subscribed and watched some of your other videos and history .. double thumbs up for awesome work that you've shared. I pray the Lord will continue to bless you as you bless others with your gift He has given you :) 👍👍✨✨✔✔
@@jonlbs7 Thanks for your kind words Jon, don't underrate being a generalist, we may not get paid as much, but I think it might make us more interesting, at a minimum I find that it makes life more interesting for us. ;-)
Why is it that their is no basic feature to disable certain users from modifying the database settings.
We can create all this other bling visually and make a very functional database but other than some crazy and complicated techniques with standalone forms you cannot restrict users from making a mess of your creation.
It seems completely ridiculous this is not a standard feature.
Don’t forget Nasi, LibreOffice base is made by volunteers, it’s not meant to be enterprise grade.
However I have two suggestions...
1 use a Split database (I’ve got two videos on this subject), that way you can always redeploy the master UI.
2 connect LO base to a MySQL database (also free), now you can put some enterprise level security into the database and redeploy your front end db after users have messed up their version.
After telling them off, of course :-)
PERFECT
Glad you liked it
I gave up on your video because everything was going too fast.
You may know in which direction you are going to move the cursor in order to pick a selection but I don't, therefore you often pick something and move on before I see where and what you are selecting.
In TH-cam you do have the option of pausing the video or slowing it down.
Don’t give up, you can do it...
I gave up too-- am using version 7.1 and with slight differences in layout I couldn't locate the 'form navigator' button. Besides, you dragged in some window from the right side of the video but whatever you did was covered by your own video thumbnail. I may come if I can't find another tutorial or use the help guide.
@@jbrodgers3551 Have a look at my LibreOffice base playlist, I have several videos on using base forms. My videos make it 100 times easier than the work I had to do to figure it out. So the answer's there, in one of my other videos if you can't find it in this one.
You speak too fast for a beginner to learn all of this gentle feedback hope you work on this
You can slow the video down on TH-cam settings.
@@BusinessProgrammer I do agree with that but like could you slow down your steps and explain a little more on what you were doing cause some of the things you did when creating a form weren't very clear for me
@@kiratmangi5943 The following playlist covers all my LibreOffice base videos th-cam.com/video/k6XUpvYwuPg/w-d-xo.html and this video link here is one specifically about forms th-cam.com/video/R1sc8cfpqGI/w-d-xo.html
I cover forms in more than one video so if you check them out you'll probably get more information.
It's impossible to please everyone if I go too slow people won't watch either, so If I covered stuff in other videos I don't go super slow as you can find more detail in other videos.
hahaha oh my god your a libre office guy and your on windows.......
No i say this very much with humour and light hearted intent.
Where is Linux
Hi Nasi
I don’t have a dog in that race,
I’m not a “LibreOffice guy”, I’m a business Programmer guy ;-).
I like LibreOffice because it’s free and cross platform. Base is the only desktop database that works on windows, Mac and Linux.
Let’s face it though, not many business operate in Linux (for the desktop for non tech employees, no matter how good it isn’t).
Yes I’m on windows (and Mac) most of my viewers use windows also.
My channel is about getting things done not being geeky (although I am a little :-) )
I know you’re only joking, but I think it’s a point worth clarifying.
It takes a lot of knowledge to get a Linux machine up and working and keeping it useful.
I’m all about the struggle though brother ;-)
@@BusinessProgrammer you are right, and a good way to put it: Linux is more of a kit that requires you to put it together, then maintain your version on your own. Powerful, but not easy enough. I’m actually a full time Linux user. Windows is not manageable for what I do. Windows is easy on the surface, but becomes a serious problem real soon.
@@anndrake492 You're right, I've had PC's in the 90's and early 2000, went to Mac in late 2005 (used both though) and came back to PC in late 2018, working with OS-X/Unix is much easier than digging through Window 10 menus and permissions which I don't have the time to get on top of and will probably change with the next release, but prior to the Apple M1 chip you got more bang for your buck with Windows/Ryzen.