Oracle 10g XE with SQL Developer

First of all my background. I was a software developer from 1975 until the late 1990s. I developed software on OpenVMS systems eventually writing code to interface to Oracle, Ingres, Rdb, Sybase, Progress, and Interbase databases. With Oracle I used the Oracle Call Interface. With the other databases I used their native call routines whenever possible. I had very use for any tools that sat on top of the database engine other than the interactive SQL tool. I also have very extensive experience with indexed file structions (ISAM, B-Tree, etc.). I haven't done any database development now for at least 15 years, so I'm a bit rusty. I'm now retired.

I have a very small database application that I need to develop for our hiking club. The club has no money to buy any software, let alone any computers to run it. It works with volunteers only. I volunteered to look at better solution than a spreadsheet to keep track of the hikes and the hikers. I'm looking for a free database application and tools to develop the little application. I also need to develop it in a manner that allows me to transfer the entire application and database to someone else when I'm no longer around, move away, or whatever.

The application involves only 4 tables, 3 which will be relatively stable once loaded, maybe 10% growth in number of rows per year, while the 4th table will be fairly active, which will be basically a log of every hike performed by every hiker. Two of the tables will have less than 10 columns, while the other two may have up to 20 columns. Pretty simple.

I need to be able to have a tool that will allow me to develop a form for easy adding, changing, and deleting of rows in each of the tables. It would be nice if the form would allow some simple data validation as it was entered by the end user, such as looking up the Hiker_ID in the Hiker table when it is being entered into the Hike_Log table. I also need to develop a few reports, some to validate the integrity of the data and some to list subsets of the data.

I looked at the Open Office suite and MySQL. After spending several hours experimenting, the Open Office database product doesn't appear to have the capabilities that I need. Perusing the MySQL web pages I was not able to find any free tool that allowed the data entry form development.

Oracle appears to offer a FREE database product called Oracle 10g XE. Their web page also indicates that SQL developer is also free.

The reporting that I need appears to be available in SQL developer. My question is: Does SQL developer allow me to develop the simple insert, update, and delete forms that could be used by people that find simple word processing to be a challenge?

Thanks in advance. Received on Sun Nov 16 2008 - 19:03:23 CST