LibreOffice Base is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

database development and administration tool for

relational database management system A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

s that is part of the

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source productivity software, office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was fork (software development), forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of t ...

office suite Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintings, ...

. LibreOffice Base was built off of a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...

and was first released as version 3.4.0.1 on October 4, 2011. Similarly to the other packages in the LibreOffice suite, Base is supported across multiple platforms including

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

. Base is recognized for its cross-platform compatibility relative to

Microsoft Access Microsoft Access is a database management system (DBMS) from Microsoft that combines the relational Access Database Engine (ACE) with a graphical user interface and software-development tools (not to be confused with the old Microsoft Access ...

, which is developed exclusively for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Features

LibreOffice Base is designed to allow users to easily create, access, modify, and view databases and their data. This is done by providing users with a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

that allows users to work with four main tools:

Tables Table may refer to: * Table (furniture), a piece of furniture with a flat surface and one or more legs * Table (landform), a flat area of land * Table (information), a data arrangement with rows and columns * Table (database), how the table data ...

, queries, forms, and reports. Base includes software wizards to assist users with various aspects of the program. LibreOffice Base requires

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

in order to create databases with forms, wizards, and more. LibreOffice 7

Base is able to work with both embedded and external database files. Embedded databases are stored as a single file using

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

based

Firebird Firebird and fire bird may refer to: Mythical birds * Phoenix (mythology), sacred firebird found in the mythologies of many cultures * Bennu, Egyptian firebird * Huma bird, Persian firebird * Firebird (Slavic folklore) Bird species ''Various sp ...

and Java-based

HSQLDB HSQLDB (''Hyper SQL Database'') is a relational database management system written in Java. It has a JDBC driver and supports a large subset of SQL-92, SQL:2008, SQL:2011, and SQL:2016 standards. It offers a fast, small (around 1300 kilobyte ...

as its storage engine. When connecting to external databases, Base acts as a graphical user interface front-end to facilitate interactions with various database systems including

Access Database Engine The Access Database Engine (also Office Access Connectivity Engine or ACE and formerly Microsoft Jet Database Engine, ''Microsoft JET Engine'' or simply ''Jet'') is a database engine on which several Microsoft products have been built. The firs ...

(ACE/JET),

ODBC In computing, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard application programming interface (API) for accessing database management systems (DBMS). The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of database systems and operating systems. An ...

JDBC Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) is an application programming interface (API) for the programming language Java, which defines how a client may access a database. It is a Java-based data access technology used for Java database connectivity. I ...

data sources,

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Development is led by some of the ori ...

, and

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...

. Base has been described as an unusual project in the niche of database management system software which tends toward proprietary software designed for enterprise users. Proprietary database management software costs have been described as a reason for the use of Base in small businesses.

Migration From HSQLDB to Firebird

Work was started in 2014 to transition the embedded storage engine from

to the

SQL back-end. Firebird has been included in LibreOffice as an experimental option since LibreOffice 4.2. In August 2018, The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice version 6.1. If the experimental mode is used, the embedded Firebird engine support is fully available, and the old HSQLDB engine is deprecated—although still available—and replaced by Firebird as the default option. In February 2019, The Document Foundation released LibreOffice version 6.2. The embedded Firebird engine support was moved from experimental mode to operational and the Firebird Migration Assistant can create a backup copy of content as an XML document for the migration process. In February 2020, embedded Firebird was moved back to experimental mode, taking effect in version 6.4.1.

References

External links

LibreOffice Base at LibreOffice.org

LibreOffice Base Handbook at The Document Foundation Wiki
{{DEFAULTSORT:LibreOffice Base Cross-platform free software LibreOffice Desktop database application development tools Database administration tools