A while ago we demonstrated how to use Open Office Base to connect to a PostgreSQL server using both the native PostgreSQL SBC and the PostgreSQL JDBC driver.
The routine for doing the same in Open Office Base 3.2 is pretty much the same as it was in the 2.3 incarnation. In this excerpt, we'll demonstrate how to import data into PostgreSQL using Open Office Base, as we had promised to do in
Database Administration, Reporting, and Light Applicaton Development and some stumbling blocks to watch out for.
Use Case
Command line lovers are probably scratching there head, why you want to do this. After all stumbling your way thru a commandline and typing stuff is much more fun and you can automate it after you are done.
For our needs, we get stupid excel or some other kind of tab delimeted data
from somebody, and we just want to cut and paste that data in our database. These files are usually small (under 5000 records) and the column names are never consistent. We don't want to fiddle with writing code to do these one off type exercises.
For other people, who are used to using GUIs or training people afraid of command lines, the use cases are painfully obvious, so we won't bore you.
Importing Data with Open Office Base Using copy and paste
Open Office has this fantastic feature called Copy and Paste (no kidding), and we will demonstrate in a bit, why their copy and paste is better than Microsoft Access's Copy and Paste particularly when you want to paste into some database other than a Microsoft one.
It is worthy of a metal if I dear say.
