A review of the Glom graphical database front-end (Xaprb) [LWN.net]

Xaprb.com has a review of Glom. "Glom is an interesting graphical database front-end I’ve been meaning to try out for some time. Someone asked about graphical database front-ends on the #mysql IRC channel recently, and that prompted me to install Glom and learn how to use it. My overall impressions? It lands squarely in the middle of its target audience’s needs, but still has a quirk here and there. With a bit of polish it will be a fine product, and it’s already a winner over Microsoft Access and Filemaker, two similar programs with which you might be familiar. In this article I’ll walk through installing and configuring Glom, a simple database design, a quick peek under the hood, an archaeologist’s experiences using it, and give my opinions about Glom in detail."

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Terrible design

Posted Sep 10, 2006 0:35 UTC (Sun) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

The story looks very ugly at 1280x1024 resolution. Only the middle third of the page is used for the text. The sides are just wide areas with a funky distracting pattern. Yet the story is very long, so it stretches vertically maybe to twenty screens.

To work around this problem, turn off the style in Firefox:

View -> Page Style -> No Style

A review of the Glom graphical database front-end (Xaprb)

Posted Sep 10, 2006 17:12 UTC (Sun) by chill633 (guest, #16013) [Link]

Not to be misleading, but the author says he was asked about a database GUI on the #mysql channel and then reviews a Postgres-only GUI? Glom looks like a great product, but I see no reference to getting it working with MySQL other than "it might be possible".

Also, from the Glom wiki:

"Glom uses the PostgreSQL database backend but it can not edit databases that it did not create, because it uses only a simple subset of Postgres functionality."

So while it has lots of potential, calling it "...already a winner over Microsoft Access and Filemaker..." is just plain bullsh*t.

A review of the Glom graphical database front-end (Xaprb)

Posted Sep 10, 2006 20:03 UTC (Sun) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888) [Link]

> calling it "...already a winner over Microsoft Access and Filemaker..." is just plain bullsh*t.

Really? How well do Access or Filemaker work with MySQL or with databases that they did not create?

In my book, working with PostgeSQL makes it a winner. Apparently it uses libgda as the database abstraction layer, so it should work with any RDBMS for which there's a libgda interface (currently ODBC, PostreSQL, MySQL and Sybase, according to the libgda web site).

A review of the Glom graphical database front-end (Xaprb)

Posted Sep 10, 2006 21:30 UTC (Sun) by osma (subscriber, #6912) [Link]

> Really? How well do Access or Filemaker work with MySQL or with databases that they did not create?

Sorry to say this, but Access actually works quite well with a MySQL database it didn't create. I've built a fairly large database app using that combination, and it's been in production use for about 5 years and used by several people in a non-profit organization. However, for obvious reasons I'm on the lookout for alternative platforms to reimplement the app on something more solid, free etc., and Glom certainly looks interesting in this regard.

With Filemaker I guess you wouldn't get very far trying to use something like MySQL or PostgreSQL.

A review of the Glom graphical database front-end (Xaprb)

Posted Sep 11, 2006 1:18 UTC (Mon) by chill633 (guest, #16013) [Link]

Access does not provide a "limited subset" of Jet (the database engine), nor does Filemaker provide a "limited subset" of its database backend. That was my main beef with the statement.