Ben Forta

At the request of a reader, I created an OpenOffice Base version of the example database used in my Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes. The file can be downloaded from the book page.
To use this, you’ll obviously need OpenOffice. And as it turns out, Base is actually a really nice database to experiment with, as it features a built-in screen that lets you simply enter and execute SQL. So, once you have OpenOffice installed, here’s what you need to do:

• Open the book database with OpenOffice Base
• Select the Query tab on the left
• Click the “Create Query in SQL View” task to display the Query Design screen
• Type your SQL in the window
• Click the Run Query button (it has an image of a green check mark on top of 2 documents) to execute your SQL, you can also just press F5 to run
• Your results will be shown above your SQL code (unless you generate an error)

Thank you Roy (no last name provided) for the inspiration.