LibreOffice Base Database Tutorial No Code Required

How to create a relational database using forms and subforms without using macro code.
In this tutorial, I walk you through the creation of a useful database that manages courses and the students enrolled in these courses.
Together we build a complex form with four main sections and a total of 7 independent table grids.

This tutorial covers creating the database from scratch.
Using SQL to create the tables.
Using SQL to load some data to the tables.
Designing the forms and subforms.
Writing SQL queries to make the forms work.
Creating Useful forms in LibreOffice Base

LibreOffice Base complete playlist (all lessons):

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#libreoffice​​ #openoffice​ #businessprogrammer #LibreOfficeBase #Databases​

DISCLAIMER: This video and description contain affiliate links, this means if you click on one of the product links, I might receive a small commission.

[LibreOfficeHispano]

As always, this video excels! Besides giving you my congratulations, I thank you a lot! It's so rare to find practical things with LibreOffice, not to say with Base. Your videos are very well explained and help us to understand what things are for. Thanks, again!

[feketealexandru]

Dear Sir, I would like to address these few lines to you. It is very strange that just yesterday I started to study SQL commands in open office and what to see just one day you decided to continue the tutorial with SQL commands in the database. And in the free office, which is a rarity. So I must congratulate you on this. I wish you good health and success in everything you do. With thousands of respects Fekete Alexander from Romania, the city of Oradea.

[begriddled]

This is a REALLY helpful video! Also, I really like the speed at which you go through things. I'm having to pause and skip back a lot, which I'm happy about because I'm sure I'm going to be coming back to it a few times to fill in the pieces and remind myself of stuff and it will be at an ideal speed for that.

[AtlantaTerry]

Thank you for taking the time and effort to create this tutorial.

[aj]

Sean another great tutorial...definitely going to complete one for myself.

[chascoleman]

Sean, just when I start finishing my form set using macro/VB to build the various forms and text boxes you make a tutorial on how to do it all with SQL and no VB (I prefer SQL as it is far clearer and easier to support and modify). Thanks again for a great instructional video, including the speed which I quickly slowed down from my default 1.5, though I followed it just fine at high speed, taking notes was impossible. One useful aspect of watching it at high speed is the repeating patterns emerge which is an important element of this solution you created. One aspect that would be nice to see is a pre or post explanation / display with enlargement of all the buttons you quickly press for each function, both those in the menus around the workspace and those inside the various property boxes. This exposition will calm the student as they will discover you aren't using a large number of the possible choices available. Another possible way to ease the student's learning burden is creating short 'loops' of button traversal, calling them an appropriate name, like 'DS Form Creation' and 'DS SubForm Creation' or 'Textbox Definition'. Separating these repeating patterns/traversals allows you to expand on what each step does, even if it is quickly obvious, like a button size / location specification. These traversals become 'tools' for the student (as they clearly are for you) to construct useful elements of a database solution, allowing the student to see the process at a more general level which is how they will operate once they understand what they're doing.

[cbbcbb]

Thanks. This is a very useful tutorial. Just what I needed.

[robt]

Very informative and helpful (once I'd slowed it down to 75%)
Is there a way to show the finished form without all the LO menus etc?

[JFWienecke]

Hi Sean, I appreciate this explanation. I wanted to create add a student to a course, however your tutorial did not include that. I thinking of building a little application where the table insert has 3 reference (one to many) tables. Do you have a video that explains this type form creation?

[agilmore]

Apparently, I got lost at 9 minutes in on the gridMapCourseStudent where you add listbox Courses & listbox Students... My listboxes never show up as dropdowns and I didn't see you add it in, as there isn't a place in properties to change it to dropdown. What am I missing? I run LibreOffice Base on MacBook Pro, although, I wouldn't think that should make a difference.

[staninjapan]

It is taking me a lot of time to find a way to quickly and simply query an Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet now that MS Office no longer has the Access database.
I happen to also have an older machine with Linux Mint 21, which means I have Libre Office.
Can Sean / anyone say whether spending another 30 minutes (here) is likely to give me a solid start, or even whether I ought to stick with Google Sheets (where the data is) and learn about Google API or Google forms.
I have a windows PC and a Linux PC, both of which can access Google online.
Thank you, I hope it's not too presumptuous to ask.

[joelgarciadacosta]

My dear teacher: is it possible, in Base, to create a field in a form, where, when the user types, an asterisk or other special character appears, as it happens in password-type fields? Thank you very much and congratulations for the tutorial.

[cbglvis]

Good morning, I am a Parish Clerk desperately trying to amalgamate historical burial records and current records. As you can imagine there are lots of rules and I'm trying to design the tables to enable me to meet those rules. I get lots of correspondence - emails, printed forms, scanned forms, document files etc - all of which can be tied back to the Plot Number as the primary key. Brilliant but can LibreOffice Base store generic documents as a data type? And if so, how do I get the document 'into' the database? TIA, Peter

[ProtectAnimalLife]

I just started using Libre Base and created a database and a table. I then successfully put data into the first record (# 0). A few days later, I tried to put data into a second record but it did not work. I saw no way to add anything to the second record. What am I missing?

[ibinaobabaya]

This was really very, very helpful.
Why didn't you define relations? Apparently it works without, but just for me to understand why or why not: Isn't that necessary in general? Or has it any disydvantages/advantages? (I'm new to Libre Base, coming from Filemaker, where defining the relations is one of the first (and essential) steps in creating a project.)

[derekthompson]

Good video, I'm wanting to create a Case Workfliw system in Libre database that is automated and sends emails, what is the best way to set this up or are there any templates available for it?

[Teuser]

I don't understand. The title of this videao is no code required, however I see a lot of SQL commands. This is not something for beginners like I am.

[greisboy]

I will not even try using libreoffice base, untill they replace basic with better language like python. I just hate basic.