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Perhaps the most useful feature of Access for small business users is the "Reports" feature, which allows users to build fully formated documents from query results, such as mailing labels, certificates, fully addressed envelopes, etc. I've never seen an open source tool with comparable functionality, and from my brief review of Rekall's feature set it doesn't seem to provide this either.

For what I can see it does not compare too well with FabForce's DB Designer 4 ( http://www.fabforce.net/dbdesigner4/ ). It does all that this program does but also does Reverse Engineering. Give it a try. I have and haven't stop using it since then.

Indeed, this DBDesigner tool is very sweet. But it only supports MySQL, and DB2, Oracle and PostgreSQL would be desirable too..

I've used a previous version of Data Architect and one feature I sorely missed was the ability to copy columns from one table into another, such as primary keys in a parent table to foreign keys in a child table. Has this been added in the newest version?

I believe if you read the review again, you will see that Data Architect does, in fact, do reverse engineering. The author mentions doing it twice in fact.

"You can design and use forms and reports"

Straight from the Rekall webpage.

and here is a screenshot of creating reports from the site as well:

http://www.thekompany.com/products/rekall/_img/screenshots/reportde...

as far as the "such as mailing labels, certificates, fully addressed envelopes, etc." I am not totally sure...but I always thought that was more of a function Office (more specifically Word)? and OpenOffice/StarOffice can do that.

I think Kexi
http://www.koffice.org/kexi/
also looks very promising and has even better integration with KOffice to do that other things you talked about.

I haven't used either product, but from what I can grok from screenshots and documentation, Data Architect stands out in that it supports more database servers (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, MS SQL Server, Oracle, etc.) and it runs on a Mac in addition to Windows and Linux. DBDesigner has a cleaner looking interface though.

Gnome-DB is another such application, but it is not as advanced: http://www.gnome-db.org/
And then there is Aqua Studio too, which is also multiplatform and free.

"Basically, the answer is TKC is bankrupt."

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=rekall+group:comp.lang.python&hl=...

from the online docs: "Rekall is fundementaly just a too to extract"

Anyone know what toolkit(s) they're using to build these apps?

Bascule (IP: ---.atmos.colostate.edu) - Posted on 2003-11-18 21:11:52
Perhaps the most useful feature of Access for small business users is the "Reports" feature, which allows users to build fully formated documents from query results, such as mailing labels, certificates, fully addressed envelopes, etc. I've never seen an open source tool with comparable functionality, and from my brief review of Rekall's feature set it doesn't seem to provide this either.

Hence the reason why a large number of us "pragmatic *NIX users" suggest to people wanting an alternative to Windows but without the learning curve or lack of software to go with a Mac.

A small business owner could easily run everything they needed on an eMac plus 4D, MYOB, Office X and a few other bits 'n pieces, possibly Corel Graphics Suite if they're interested in a low cost graphics suite which would enable them to produce their own brochers, leaflets and other marketing material.

Anonymous (IP: ---.dip.t-dialin.net) - Posted on 2003-11-18 22:26:34
"Basically, the answer is TKC is bankrupt."

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=rekall+group:comp.lang.python&......

Not to sound cynical but they would be alot better off being porting company; licensing and porting proprietary software to Linux. It is alot easier to license and port than trying to build an application from scratch to compete with an existing solution which exists either on the same or alternative platform.

If it were me, I would first licensed 4D and ported it, then move onto Lotus Smart Suite or Wordperfect Suite, then ported those. These are commercial products that would fit real needs in the Linux community but unfortunately a large number of programmers don't get it(tm).