How similar or different are the Base implimentations under LibreOffice vs OpenOffice?

[andrewH]

Dear folks – I have recently switched from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. I am pleased to say that so far that switch has been quite painless. For all the areas where I have made extensive use of the Microsoft Office components – basically Word, Excel, and Powerpoint ( I have previously switched all my Outlook functions over to Google) the equivalent LibreOffice program has been comparably powerful and easier to use. Bravo!

However, I now find myself in need of a way to create and use a database. I have made almost no use of databases previously (except using other people’s databases through interfaces that other people have written) and I have already established that I have a lot to learn. I need a database primarily because I am dealing with files (from the U.S. Census & Bureau of Labor Statistics) that are bigger than Calc will open. Ultimately I will be doing this analysis in some mix of Calc and R, but in both cases I would like to do as much preprocessing via database as possible to avoid line limits (in Calc) and memory limits (in R). I will not be doing anything particularly complicated – mainly loading .csv OR tab-delimited flat files and then pulling out rows and columns, with perhaps some substitutions, mathematical or logical operations, and maybe calculating summary statistics on some subsets (e.g. on records by state or by racial category).

This brings me to my question: Is Base in OpenOffice pretty much the same as Base in OfficeLibre at the level of sophistication and complexity that I am talking about? Because I am finding a lot more beginner’s guides, video tutorials, and and blogs and such that explain how to do particular basic tasks using OpenOffice than LibreOffice. I assume that this is just because they have been around longer, but I would like to know if I can trust these learning materials in most basic (no pun intended) cases for guidance on OfficeLibre Base. Can I? And if I can, are there good beginner’s materials I can refer to that would help me in the cases where they are different?

Any help and guidance I can get would be much appreciated. I am using LibreOffice 4.2.1.1 under Windows 7 64-bit with Service Pack 1.

Warmest regards, andrewH

[oweng]

Is Base in OpenOffice pretty much the same as Base in OfficeLibre at the level of sophistication and complexity that I am talking about?

For the most part they should be fairly close, if not identical. The one possible difference is the work being done at present to change from using HSQLDB to Firebird as a default backend in LO (brief history of this project here). This is not yet ready for widespread adoption, although testers are encouraged to try and break things and report bugs. It is unlikely that anyone other than a developer will be able to give a clearer picture. You can always download the source bundle for each and perform a compare (diff) of the respective source trees to get a more detailed indication.

I am finding a lot more beginner’s guides, video tutorials, and and blogs and such that explain how to do particular basic tasks using OpenOffice than LibreOffice. I assume that this is just because they have been around longer …

There are likely also a greater number of Base experts in the Apache OO community (forums and mailing lists), although there are a few people that frequent both projects. I can recommend the alternate Base forum here if you have detailed queries (caveat: I am a moderator there). The Apache OO Base forum will also not mind you raising database-related queries.

There is a thread of links to useful Base material here.

EDIT: Known differences listed below. Date relate to the time of the change.

• 2013-07-15, LO v4.1 UNO date & time-related structs: (release notes) (LOforum post) changed from a serial time value to a structured value. A macro fix is included in the linked LOforum post.

[constantinovalverde]

most companies work with microsoft office avery body now that, my comment is about is libre office compatible with? because I been sending my resume and I figure out a day somebody send an email to me and I can’t open your file.