“Is there any trivial way to use Core Data? What is the most lightweight way to have a database on a Mac? If I wanted to write an application that needed db capabilities, what options do I have that don’t require the user to install mysql and set it up on their own? Core Data is easy enough for non-programmers to handle a basic database with.”
Reminds me of an article a few years back written by Be OS guru Scott
Hacker.
http://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/24-scripting_the_bfs/
I’m really enjoying Mac OS X Tiger and most of what I liked in Be OS,
NeXTStep and some features from Unix/Linux, Mac OS9 and Windows are
in one OS.
My wish list is for,
WindowShade to be offered as a feature
Virtual Desktops Workspaces
Tab Folders NeXTStep like Shelf (seperate from the Dock)
Better filetyping
One free client for Remote Desktop and Remote Assistance
and thats the short list for now
I too have wished for features like that so I use:
Windowshade X for windowshadeset to always on top and you can tweak the shadows with it and minimize to desktop if you want.
DesktopManager for virtual desktops (with cool transition effects)
Dragthing for NeXT type shelf
Not sure about those last ones but the first 3 I got covered, lol
Those are the three formats supported natively by CoreData. The good thing is that if you sell a solution to a client (say running on a mac mini) you can offer a cheap solution on a mac but assure the client that the data itself will always be readable in 10 years, even if macs dissapear 🙂 You can work with SQLite for decent performance and just export from time to time to XML to ensure easily readable backups.
Usually it’s hard to sell a solutoin saying it requires a mac and the latest version of the OS (10.4). But if at least you can argue that the database format is open it could be a winner for fast development. I tried developing some test apps: it’s almost as easy as FileMaker.
> I tried developing some test apps: it’s almost as
> easy as FileMaker.
That’s exactly what I’m searching for – have you eventually released those apps for public review/use?
Unfortunately I’m not a programmer, and even if those CoreData-Reviews and -HowTos seem to look very easy for someone, who is used to coding, they are far beyond my skills..
A simple Open Source – Database App, which is relying upon CoreData and Cocoa, would be pretty perfect, and I guess that it’s not very hard to write something like that(?). Volunteers needed!
Beside, there is a graphical tool for interactively entering and executing queries on a Core Data database. Query results come back as objects that can be graphicaly vizualized and manipulated.
http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?CoreDataExplorer