LibreOffice Base

LibreOffice Base is an open source RDBMS (relational database management system) frontend tool to create and manage various databases.

Preparing the ODBC Connection

First, make sure to prepare MariaDB Connector/ODBC as explained in .

This includes

• downloading the latest MariaDB Connector/ODBC,

• copying the shared library libmaodbc.so to /usr/lib/[multi-arch],

• installing the unixodbc, unixodbc-dev, openssh-client, odbcinst packages, and

• creating a template file for the .

• Install the ODBC driver from the template file by running:

Verify the installation was successful in /etc/odbcinst.ini file (this path is obtained by the config info /-j/ option, where drivers are installed in that predefined location).

• Create a template file for the . A sample “MariaDB_odbc_data_source_template.ini” could be:

• Install data source:

• Verify successful installation in the /.odbc.ini file

• Verify successful installation also using the utility:

Start with LibreOffice Base

Start Libreoffice Base from the terminal by running lobase (make sure to install the libreoffice-base package if needed). The default option is to create a new database, which is HSQLDB. In order to connect to a running MariaDB server, choose “Connect to an existing database” and choose “ODBC” driver as shown below:

After that, choose DSN (the one that we created in the previous step) and click “Next”:

Provide a user name (and password if needed) and again check the connection (with the “Test Connection” button) and click “Next”:

After that, we have options to register the database. Registration in this sense means that the database is viewable by other LibreOffice modules (like LibreOffice Calc and LibreOffice Writer). So this step is optional. In this example, we will save as “fosdem21_mariadb.odb”. See .

It opens the following window:

It consists of three panels:

1. “Database” window with the options,

2. "Tables",

3. "Queries",

4. "Forms",

As we can see, there are system tables in the “mysql” database as well as “test” database.

Let’s say we create a table using the REST API from JSON data from , and another table using the same mechanism from , and let’s call them webposts and webusers. In order to do so, we have to enable the CONNECT storage engine plugin and start with REST_API. See more in the article.

The queries we need to run in MariaDB are:

The result in LibreOffice Base is as shown below:

Double clicking on the table opens a new window with the data displayed to inspect:

To create the table from the “Tasks” window, use the option “Create Table in Design View”, where one can specify specific field names and types as shown:

From the “Tasks” window one can create a table using the option “Use Wizard to Create Table” to create some sample tables.

One can fill the data in the existing table, or create and define the new table from the LibreOffice Calc module with simple copy-paste (in the "Tasks" window).

Using a Registered Database

Other modules can use the registered database, for example, open "LibreOffice Calc" and go to "Tools", "Options" and you will see the "odb" file we registered when starting "LibreOffice Base".

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