Boris G
Well Known Member
I recently had to migrate some data into JDEdwards. Normally I use MS Excel to format the data and then MS Access to insert it into JDE tables. That can be done either with a simple copy/paste, or with update queries. The process is simple and intuitive.
This time around, however, the client did not have MS Office loaded on their fat client and I was forced to use OpenOffice. "Great", I thought - "this will give me a chance to play with a new product that's available for free and has been receiving a lot of hype lately".
The setup: using an AT&T DSL line, I create a VPN connection, and then RDP to the fat client. Data is inserted via an ODBC connection into EnterpriseOne 8.12 running on a SQL Server database.
OpenOffice results: the spreadsheet created in Excel opened up just fine in Calc and the formatting is OK. It was also easy to create ODBC-linked tables in Base. But to display the data took over a minute (1000 record table). Several times Base locked up and had to be terminated. Once the data was displayed, I would navigate to the bottom to display the last record. Selecting about 1000 records in Calc, pressing <copy> and then <paste> into Base produced.....nothing. After repeating several times, I could not get the data to paste into the linked table. I tried using an append query with the same results. So to summarize: OpenOffice was slow to respond, crashed several times and I couldn't figure out how to upload the data. Maybe one of the readers can help out and provide a method for next time.
MS Office results: after my miserable experience with OpenOffice, the client finally installed MS Office. Opening an ODBC-linked table in Access was immediate. Copy/Paste worked like a charm and nothing crashed.
I keep waiting for OpenOffice to be mature enough to be used for business. They've come a long way with version 3.2 but it's still not stable enough. Maybe the next release? Will there even be a next release now that Oracle has purchased Sun? We'll wait and see.
This time around, however, the client did not have MS Office loaded on their fat client and I was forced to use OpenOffice. "Great", I thought - "this will give me a chance to play with a new product that's available for free and has been receiving a lot of hype lately".
The setup: using an AT&T DSL line, I create a VPN connection, and then RDP to the fat client. Data is inserted via an ODBC connection into EnterpriseOne 8.12 running on a SQL Server database.
OpenOffice results: the spreadsheet created in Excel opened up just fine in Calc and the formatting is OK. It was also easy to create ODBC-linked tables in Base. But to display the data took over a minute (1000 record table). Several times Base locked up and had to be terminated. Once the data was displayed, I would navigate to the bottom to display the last record. Selecting about 1000 records in Calc, pressing <copy> and then <paste> into Base produced.....nothing. After repeating several times, I could not get the data to paste into the linked table. I tried using an append query with the same results. So to summarize: OpenOffice was slow to respond, crashed several times and I couldn't figure out how to upload the data. Maybe one of the readers can help out and provide a method for next time.
MS Office results: after my miserable experience with OpenOffice, the client finally installed MS Office. Opening an ODBC-linked table in Access was immediate. Copy/Paste worked like a charm and nothing crashed.
I keep waiting for OpenOffice to be mature enough to be used for business. They've come a long way with version 3.2 but it's still not stable enough. Maybe the next release? Will there even be a next release now that Oracle has purchased Sun? We'll wait and see.