PostgreSQL

Standard admin tool

I use pgadmin3 version 1.12 because it is available on every platform and works the same everywhere and it is free. The same client works with both 8.4 and 9.0 postgresql.

Associated tools

PostGIS - spatially enabled PostgreSQL

pgMap - a connector to use PostGIS from ArcGIS.

Navicat - a GUI front end for PostgreSQL. See http://www.navicat.com/ Includes report generation tools

MS Access

I don't actually use Access and don't currently have a copy installed anywhere so someone should write up and add comments to this section.

article on using MS Access with PostgreSQL

The crucial aspect here is to install the PostgreSQL ODBC driver on Windows.

Things to note and perhaps deal with

1. Access users don't expect case-sensitivity.
2. There is no support for booleans in Access so you have to hack around this

Openoffice / Libreoffice Base

Use the SDBC driver. On Ubuntu this means selecting the package in Synaptic and installing it. libreoffice-sdbc-postgresql in my case. On Ubunu Base is not installed by default so I also installed libreoffice-base

The Datasource URL requested in Base should look like this:

host=myhostname.wildsong.biz port=5433 dbname=mydatabase

I have to know my username and password to test the connection. I have to tell it the name of a file to save the settings information in on the local computer.

Most critically at this point I have to know how to use both Base and PostgreSQL. :-)