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

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

I think this is typically "MS Access" in the Windows world. It seems like a GUI around a sqlite database might be able to do what you want, depending on how friendly the GUI to be, though the 'typed, homogenous' columns might fail you there.

(I've, generally speaking, become much more of a fan of sqlite over the past year or so.)

[(Anonymous)]

Have a look at couchdb: http://incubator.apache.org/couchdb/
It is written in Erlang.

[goawaystupidai.livejournal.com]

If you are familiar with Objective-C then you should look into using CoreData. It has multiple serialization formats. One of which is to a SQLite file. Another is XML.

I've used CoreData to quickly knock up applications to manage small data sets. I have a program to track workouts. Record recipes. A mini issue tracker. Small time stuff like that. Nothing took more than an hour or two to get an initial version working.

Not quite as beginner friendly as MS Access, but a really nice system in my opinion.

OmniOutliner?

[(Anonymous)]

At it's simplest it's a glorified to-do list, but it's a lot more than that. I'm using it for planing the DIY renovation of my house, including the costs and progress (sigh), through to planing presentations and holding development scrum information.

It's got a good Mac native UI and came as part of the bundle on my Macbook Pro, so you may be lucky and already have it.

metakit

[(Anonymous)]

You could check out metakit.

http://www.equi4.com/metakit/

jan