data base software

[HUSKER55]

I have been thinking of learning a database program and I was wondering which one you guys thought would be the easiest to use. I was surfing the other night and found fortran, basic and access, python and etc. Which one do you guys and gals think would be the easiest to learn to play horses with. I have access 2010 that came with my computer but there is a boatload you can download for free.

[DeltaLover]

Husk,

If you need an easy to relational db a very good one is:

http://www.sqlite.org

see also:

http://zetcode.com/db/sqlitepythontutorial/


You can also try NoSQL:

http://www.mongodb.org/

[HUSKER55]

thanks for the links

[Tom]

Access is easy to use and I do zero programing with it.

[Capper Al]

I decided on Access myself for now. My database needs aren't that great or demanding. Access should be able to handle everything that I do well.

[DJofSD]

I have been thinking of learning a database program and I was wondering which one you guys thought would be the easiest to use. I was surfing the other night and found fortran, basic and access, python and etc. Which one do you guys and gals think would be the easiest to learn to play horses with. I have access 2010 that came with my computer but there is a boatload you can download for free.
Wow! this is quite a goal -- ambitious but achievable.

BASIC is a place to start if you do not know any "formal" programming languages. You must crawl before you walk, so, if you are completely new to programming, learn some programming fundamentals before diving into the deep end of the pool with data bases and writing code to exploit them.

FORTRAN is not suitable for anything you would be doing. Sure, if you are doing a lot of analysis, it would help, but there are other ways to get those kinds of results.

PYTHON is a language I know very little about, so, I leave that for others to comment on.

Access is more appropriately referred to as a data base management system (DBMS). It has facilities to build, manage and access data bases, and, it has published interfaces to allow other languages to get to the data too. Perhaps it has changed but what I remember is the external access is through the so called "jet engine." If you already have Access then you do not need to spend any more money to get started. Just remember there are pluses and minuses with every choice and this includes using Access.

Another choice is SQLite. It is free and is usable up to a point. It is used from a command line. However, because there is only just so much you can do from a command line, there are other ways to exploit the power of SQLite. Look at SQLITE.COM for more information.

Another is what Open Office offers which is called Base. I have dabbled with it but I really have not developed any real databases using it. The other OO offerings will integrate with Base. The nice thing about Base is it does have a number of wizards to take you by the hand which makes it easier.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not offer some direction about learning the underpinnings of most data bases which is the relational model. There are rules which help define what is a relational database and how it functions. Some understanding of what these rules are and why they are used will give you some insight and understanding of what tools like Access or SQLite are doing (or not) and why.

Finally, there are plenty of resources on the internet for all different aspects of databases, programming to utilize them and tools. Here's one: http://databases.about.com/od/databasetraining/a/databasesbegin.htm .

Good luck.

[HUSKER55]

the more I research this the more I realize how little I know. (sad but true) :D

what I was looking for was something simple to play around with and then decide from there. I was planning on three or fourth months to get the hang of it. Is that unrealistic?

[traynor]

the more I research this the more I realize how little I know. (sad but true) :D

what I was looking for was something simple to play around with and then decide from there. I was planning on three or fourth months to get the hang of it. Is that unrealistic?

It may be more useful to be explicit about what you are going to do with the database before jumping into it. If you intend to use it primarily to store data (such as BRIS downloads), while calculations and processing are performed by another application, that is one thing. If you want to process the data with the DBMS (rather than just using it to store data), that involves some very different planning, design, and coding.

The more clearly you can define what you want to accomplish, the easier the decisions will be about how to accomplish it. You might even find that what you really want is a spreadsheet, rather than a database.

[MightBeSosa]

I would never suggest a spreadsheet for a database, if you were going to do any kind of serious data mining.

No reporting capability for one, while Access has that in spades.

You could easily produce a custom DRF in Access, easy to read and format. Try it in Excel.

[BIG49010]

If you want to process the data, and then make a report with several large data files, it can be tough with the reporting ability of most database programs. The old Firefox was much better than Access, but I don't think that Mr Softy supports it anymore. They make a few SQL reporting programs, they can be quite costly, for the average home programer.

[MightBeSosa]

The old Foxpro :D was even better.

You know, I haven't had to build anything using Access in years, but I find it hard to imagine it couldn't handle anything someone here would throw at it .

The programmer is at least 75% of the equation, bad programmer=poor results.

[traynor]

The old Foxpro :D was even better.

You know, I haven't had to build anything using Access in years, but I find it hard to imagine it couldn't handle anything someone here would throw at it .

The programmer is at least 75% of the equation, bad programmer=poor results.

That might be the source of a lot of the problems people have with Access and with databases in general. For starters, they mostly get the electronic equivalent of a big cardboard box to dump stuff into. To do anything with the stuff after it is dumped in, they have to do a serious amount of programming. Considering that a good amount of that programming will be in SQL for queries and stored queries-- and, if Access is selected, VBA--it might be better to jump right into:
http://www.dummies.com/store/product/Access-VBA-Programming-For-Dummies.productCd-0764574116.html

http://www.amazon.com/SQL-All---One-For-Dummies/dp/0470929960/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1360549822&sr=8-2&keywords=sql+for+dummies

So the first step--rather than debating the pros and cons of various RDMSs--might be to get a good book on SQL and learn how queries are made, and what needs to be done to get the database to do stuff. The idea that a database is an "alternative to learning programming" might be seen as wildly inaccurate. Getting the raw data into a database is only the beginning of a long and complex process of coding necessary to get meaningful information out of that mass of raw data.

[MightBeSosa]

Getting the data into the db is nothing, though how you format the relations is critical.

I mean there was little or nothing that I couldn't do with Foxpro for DOS , and that was at least a few weeks ago.


Matter of fact, the DRF was produced using Foxpro, not sure if it still is.

[traynor]

Getting the data into the db is nothing, though how you format the relations is critical.

I mean there was little or nothing that I couldn't do with Foxpro for DOS , and that was at least a few weeks ago.


Matter of fact, the DRF was produced using Foxpro, not sure if it still is.

I agree, but someone who is not familiar with databases may think that getting the stuff into it is a major part of the work involved in doing race analysis with a RDBMS (like Access). That is the easy part.

[GPneighbor]

Does anyone use Liberty Basic for their database? Can it handle large amounts of data?

[highnote]

I use database software called VSamEx from a small company called Software Source. It requires knowledge of VisualBasic.

I have tried to use Access, but I cannot figure out how to do complex calculations in a way that is quicker than using VSamEx.

For example, let's say you want to find the average Daily Racing Form Speed Figure for a given horse by using all of its past DRF Speed Figures. Some horses will have only 1 past race and some will have over 100. Well, to do this calculation for every horse in the database can take a bit of time because you have to query every single horse.

This would be easy to do in Access if, for example, you had a list of horse names and only wanted the most recent Speed Figure for each horse. But when you have to look up all of a horse's figures it gets complicated and I haven't figured out how to do it in Access. It is easy in VSamEx, but the query takes a long time -- especially if the database contains, say, 10 years worth of result chart information.

Ideally, I want a database that could do the above calculation in a matter of seconds.

[raybo]

the more I research this the more I realize how little I know. (sad but true) :D

what I was looking for was something simple to play around with and then decide from there. I was planning on three or fourth months to get the hang of it. Is that unrealistic?

I'm definitely not a db guy, but I have tried it several times. What I found out, the hard way, was that I should have first become a programmer. Sure you can read some db theory and get some tables setup, maybe even the relationships right. But, if you can't program, that's as far as you can go.

So, if you are really serious about this, I suggest you spend your time learning a couple of programming languages first. If you can learn that much, and understand what is going on, then you can step it up and start your db.

As has been mentioned, before creating the db, figure out what you want to get from it first, then you'll know what needs to be included in the db. Proper initial design of any app is foremost, and the only way to know what that is, is to know what you want the app to provide as outputs.

When I started working in Excel, all I wanted was to create a computer version of the DRF, so I knew where I needed to get to, then I just needed to get the stuff I'd need to use, for that, into it. So, once you know where you're going, it's much easier to know how to get there.

[HUSKER55]

thanks guys. grand daughter came over the other night and I was talking to her. She said you guys were right. Any fool can make a data base, getting the information out was a different story.

I told her I was just as good as any fool and she said "no your not".

I hate it when this happens, she is probably correct.

[Red Knave]

Does anyone use Liberty Basic for their database? Can it handle large amounts of data?
Liberty Basic is a programming language, not a 'database'. You may be able to access and manipulate a database with it though.

[DJofSD]

thanks guys. grand daughter came over the other night and I was talking to her. She said you guys were right. Any fool can make a data base, getting the information out was a different story.

I told her I was just as good as any fool and she said "no your not".

I hate it when this happens, she is probably correct.
Part of the development of relational databases is from the work of Edgar Codd ( Wiki bio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_F._Codd) ). He laid down the foundation by formulating the 12 rules ( Wiki 12 rules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codd%27s_12_rules) ). While no single RDBMS incorporates all 12, many come close. Learn something about those 12 rules especially what is referred to as normal forms and how to get to the 3rd normal form.

Anything that you can read from Chris Date is worthwhile. Very deep but thorough however, beware, beginners will be overwhelmed. I mention Date b/c I believe a mans reach should exceed his grasp and reading Date will make you reach.

P.S. Oops - see in the 2nd Wikipedia article there now 1 RDBMS package that claims to have all of the rules implemented. News to me.

[headhawg]

Does anyone use Liberty Basic for their database? Can it handle large amounts of data?I dabble with LB which is how I got started helping Handiman with the Handifast project. There's a lot to like about the language -- fairly easy to learn, very good support from the LB community -- but it really doesn't do DB stuff very well. There is no native support so you have to use a "wrapper" to allow LB to communicate with the db engine. You could check out the LB forums for more information, but the choices of db systems is limited to a very few. The only wrappers that I am aware of is for Cheetah, Tsunami, and an older version of SQLite (v3, I think). There was also something called SDdataGrid which was available at one time and included support for ODBC compliant databases.

I think that it makes more sense to look in a different direction if you want db support as LB really doesn't cut it, imo. I have looked into it, although not extensively, and it appears limiting. The "large amounts of data" quote from your post is one reason you might take a different approach. The MS Access to handicap races thread might be useful to look at as there is info there about different languages. I am currently learning another Basic language that has support for libraries. One the third-party ones is for SQLite so any db limitation would be from the db engine as opposed to the Basic language. I might even get around to learn Python, which seems to have a lot of support.

[davew]

thanks guys. grand daughter came over the other night and I was talking to her. She said you guys were right. Any fool can make a data base, getting the information out was a different story.

I told her I was just as good as any fool and she said "no your not".

I hate it when this happens, she is probably correct.


How precious, maybe you should offer her a part time job.

This reminds me of my parents having computer "problems", sometimes it is very easy fix/explanation. A couple times I had to call in experts when hard drive crash and bad virus takeover.

[vegasone]

Excerpts from Dennis's messages on ODBC:

Liberty BASIC can: interface with Access/VB databases (*.mdb), create these databases, create and modify tables, create fields, assign keys and indexes, save records, retrieve recordsets, execute SQL statements. If this can be done with Access databases it can be done with any database that uses ODBC.

This is just from a search.... most current languages feature "hooks" into most databases to allow using them as a front end. You should probably look into the current available open source databases and languages mentioned previously as well as some of the "free" Express stuff available from Microsoft.

[Greybase]

I mean there was little or nothing that I couldn't do with Foxpro for DOS, and that was at least a few weeks ago. Matter of fact, the DRF was produced using Foxpro, not sure if it still is...
Foxpro for DOS? :D Man lets get you upgraded to Visual Foxpro 9. You'll be amazed... always and still, the best desktop database/ development tool. That's interesting about Foxpro and DRF... I'm not surprised. LOTS of business applications and products were developed in VFP years ago. There are tons of so-called legacy apps running just fine in VFP today. Despite Microsoft abandoning ship in order to plug their Office crap.

Look, for anyone interested. It's an extremely powerful tool, VFP9 can be acquired fairly cheap. It runs fine in Windows 7. There is a HUGE user community online, in fact VFP is very popular worldwide. Here's a bit from the VFP WIKI: (http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?wiki~VisualFoxProWiki)

Visual FoxPro (VFP) is a programming package sold by Microsoft. It contains a programming language, a database engine and an integrated development environment (IDE). An IDE allows programmers to do most of their work inside a single program. VFP is also a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool which means that its design is focused on software built quickly.

What are basic differences between FoxPro and Access:* VFP is a professional-developer tool. MS Access is sold to and geared for end-users as part of MS Office.
* MS Access has a limitation on the number of concurrent users, number of records. Try 50 users with a 1-million+ table in both products and see the difference. (Hell, just try 10+ users and 50,000+ records and see the difference).
* VFP is an OOP tool, MS Access is not OOP.
* VFP has a rich language. MS Access uses a simpler subset of the old (deprecated) VB called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).
* VFP can create and consume XML natively.
* VFP has a rich subset of the ANSI SQL language (better and improved in VFP 9.0)
* VFP can serve in any and all tiers on an N-Tier architecture. (not saying that it is the best tool in all cases and for all purposes in these roles but that it can easily and successfully be in any of the tiers).