OpenOffice Base is a database management system capable of creating its own databases or connecting to a database created by the more powerful MySQL database server. But for the average user, creating a stand alone database is enough power. And OpenOffice Base handles this task easily.

Is it installed?

First and foremost you have to make sure the application is there. If you look in your Office sub-menu of the Applications menu you should see an entry titled “OpenOffice.org Base” (or a variation on that theme). If you do not then you are going to have to fire up your Add/Remove Software utility, search for “openoffice” (no quotes), mark OpenOffice.org Base for installation, and click Apply to install.

After Base is installed go back to the menu and see if the entry is there. If so, click it.

Running the application

Figure 1

When you first fire up OpenOffice Base the Database Wizard will start (see Figure 1). The first step is to decide what you want to do. You can:

• Create a new database.
• Open an existing database.
• Connect to an existing database (such as MySQL, Oracle, JDBC, etc)

For our purposes we are going to create a new database, so select that entry and click Next.

The next step in the wizard asks if you want to:

• Register the database: Allow the other applications in OpenOffice to have access to the data in the database.
• Open the database upon creation: Do you want to open this database up for use upon creation?
• Create tables using table wizard: Create your database tables with the easy to use wizard.

For the above I almost always:

• Register the database.
• Open the database upon completion.
• Use the table wizard to create tables.

Make your selections and click Finish. When you click Finish you will be asked to save your database with a name. Save this database in a directory you will remember, otherwise you’ll wind up hunting for it later.

If you selected to create your tables with the Wizard, when you click Finish the Tables Wizard will open.

Table Wizard

Figure 2

The Table Wizard is simple to use (see Figure 2). The first task is to select the Category of database (Business or Personal). The difference between the categories is that Business tables are geared toward SMB and enterprise work and Personal is geared toward home use.

After you select your Category choose from the Sample tables drop down. This sample table will give you a selection of table types to choose from. Once you select your type you then move fields from the left column to the right. Make sure you choose your fields carefully because adding or removing them later is not easy.

You can also move fields up and down in the right column by selecting a field and clicking the up or down arrow. The order in which your fields are in this column will be reflected in your database, so make sure you have them in the exact order you want.

Once you have all of your fields in place click the Next button.

Figure 3

In the next window you can modify the field type and format. What you are able to modify will directly depend upon both the fields you have chosen as well as your needs. Figure 3 illustrates what you can modify in a sample Employee field listing. Here you will see the details of the FirstName field.

If you need to make any modifications to your fields do so at this point and click Next when you are finished.

The next window allows you to set a primary key. You need this otherwise you will not be able to enter data. Since primary keys are often ID numbers I tend to check off the Auto Value checkbox so I don’t have to enter a key for each record. If you do not use a field like Employee ID you can select to use a field (or combination of fields) as your keys. You can use, for example, employee first and last name as your key. Once you have configured this click Next to move on.

The final step is to name your table and select what to do next. Your options for what to do next are:

• Insert data immediately.
• Modify the table design.
• Create a form based on the table.

You have officially created your database!

Final thoughts

OpenOffice Base makes creating databases fairly simple. In an upcoming article I will show you how to create a form to make filling out data for you database as easy as it was to create the database itself.

Let’s say you have two columns of numbers and you want to add a third column based on the other two data. That third columns’ entry will depend upon the information in the first two. IF entry A is greater than B THEN C is X ELSE C is Y.

But how does one do this? It’s actually quite easy. Let’s start out with a more simple example and move on to a more complex example.

The first example will illustrate a basic IF/ELSE statement that uses only two columns of data. We’ll do a simple spreadsheet that deals with how many persons each employee will bring to a company picnic. To make things easy if the person enters “0″ that means they are not bringing a guest (the employee, however,  IS required to come) and if they enter “1″ that means they are which means that employee equals two attendees. The first column will represent the name of the employee and the second column is how many guests the employee will bring. The formula to enter into the third column would look like:

=IF(B1=1;2;1)

What this will do is enter a “2″ in the third cell is the employee is bringing a guest and a 1 if they are not.

Now let’s make this a bit more complex. For this example we’ll have three columns. The first column is a number that represents how many hours an employee worked. The second column will represent how many hours over 40 they worked. The third column will represent how much overtime pay they made. But let’s say you also have to account for zero hours worked. The formula for the second column would look like this:

=IF(A9<=40;0; IF(A9>40;(A9-40)))

For the third column let’s continue with this idea. Say if an employee worked over 5 hours of overtime they would gain an extra 100 dollar bonus in their check. So we’ll add a fourth column for bonuses. For simplicity’s sake all employees make $10.00 an hour. Overtime is standard time and a half pay. So the forumla for the third column would be a standard:

=SUM((40*10)+(B9*15))

And the formula for the fourth column would be:

=IF(B9>=5;100;0)

Now for the final total for employee salary a fifth column would be added that would look like:

=SUM(C9+D9)

Final Thoughts

The examples may be very simple but the idea can be applied to many instances. Using IF/ElSE statements in OpenOffice Calc can quickly take your spreadsheets to a much higher level of usability.