Database document software?

[kpreid]

Something I've wished for several times recently is a database-document program.

By "document" I mean that the database is a single file, which I can move, copy, etc., as opposed to living in a database server which has to stay up, uses accounts and ACLs, needs special backup procedures, and so on. It doesn't need to support humongous data sets — fits-in-memory and even linear searches are fine.

I am aware that people use spreadsheets for such purposes, but I would like to have named, typed, and homogeneous columns, easy sorting/filtering/querying, etc. which I assume I'm not going to find there. Relational would be nice too.

It must be GUI, and run on Mac OS X, but it doesn't have to be thoroughly native — I can stand the better sort of Java or perhaps even X11 app.

And finally, it should have a file format that either is obvious how to parse, or has a specification, or is supported by many other programs.

Does such a thing exist?

(If not, I might write it.)

Comments

[kpreid.livejournal.com]

Hm, that sounds like a pretty good option, except that I'd need to keep around an app for each schema I use (and recompile it for changes), which is a lot of work for the kind of small documents I'm thinking of. But I'd certainly consider that if there was some schema I was going to have many documents in. Thanks.

[goawaystupidai.livejournal.com]

I think FileMaker is the closest to MS Access for the Mac. They make a mini version called "Bento" which might be what you are looking for: http://www.filemaker.com/

[kpreid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've used FileMaker Pro (and the AppleWorks/ClarisWorks database module); they're what most of my description is inspired by. It doesn't meet the file-format requirement, though. And of course I'd prefer something free :)

[(Anonymous)]

Quoted cvs files should be readable more or less eternally. You could probably write a core data serializer for whatever you think the format should look like.

[(Anonymous)]

"consistently-readable" over a long time, maybe. CSV is lossy from the start.