How to access openoffice.org database from command line

Question

I have a database built in openoffice.org base (.odb). I would like to open this database using a command line sql client, such as sqlite3 or psql. Can anyone tell me how to make this work? I am running Windows 7 64-bit and have cygwin installed.

Answer 1

AFAIK you can't access the odb database directly, since it's an embedded db instance. But you can migrate the odb to a "normal" hsqldb database and run it in a HSQLDB server. After that, the database will be accessible using command line clients like SQLTool. You still can access that database from OpenOffice Base using JDBC, so you can continue using the data from OpenOffice as well as access it "from outside".

The odb is a zip file containing the standard hsqldb database files, so it shouldn't be too hard to make it available to hsqldb directly. There are some guides and tutorials how to proceed:

• How to open an OOo database directly with HSQLDB
• HyperSQL with OpenOffice.org
• OOo forum
• another OOo forum entry
• ... and a third one