I was wondering though, probably hopeless, is there any possibility of running a database similar to Access, or Excel, or a delimited text file under Linux/Unix?

It's too bad I haven't found such a equivalent. On windows, it's nice to be able to setup a simple database using Access, Excel, or a text file, without a DSN simply by using COM objects & the appropriate ODBC or OLE DB drivers. This way, I don't have to bother & haggle with the admin people.

Unfortunately, it seems on non-windows systems, your only option is a REAL DBMS and ODBC with DSN, which all require admin intervention. It's safer this way but less productive (for the individual).

How come there's no COM & Access like equivalent for Linux/Unix? It would be nice. but I guess those who use Linux/Unix are hardcore db pros anyway (no offense meant here), so they don't care?

There are many tools that can be used to parse CSV files in Linux/Unix. Sed and awk would be good options to mimic some of excels tools. Emacs can also work on columns of data in delimited or fixed width files. On the office suite side you can use OpenOffice www.openoffice.org. There are also Access like tools in OpenOffice.

thanx, I'll look into those tools. But can those tools allow me to connect to an Access/Excel/text file (as database) and run queries from a webpage, using PHP/Perl/JSP? Both the databases & website would be on a Linux server. That's what I'd like to be able to do.

I was under the impression that for websites hosted in Linux, you can only connect to MySQL or other full fledged DBMS using its native connection functions or ODBC. Whereas in Windows the same can be done, or I can connect to an individual Access file on the website & use it as the database.

http://us4.php.net/manual/en/faq.dat...tabases.access

This link explains what you need to use an access file under php.

thanx again. unfortunately, according to the docs, it seems I can only work with Access on a Windows machine, or have the Unix system connect to a Windows system just to use the Access db. And interfacing with an intermediary db or system only works if you'r an admin. I'm looking from the user perspective. I can only hope, and work with what I got for now.