# Bad experience with Open Source... OOo

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-experience-with-open-source-ooo/350266>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [March 28, 2006, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-experience-with-open-source-ooo/350266 "2006-03-28T17:13:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2006, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-experience-with-open-source-ooo/350266/21 "2006-03-29T16:00:40Z")

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If you’re stuck on using a database instead of Perl, you could use MySQL with ODBC, and write a simple JScript or VBScript program. Okay, so that’s not much different from doing Perl with the raw data.

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is free, and usable for commercial applications; Microsoft includes documentation on how to install it along with your own distributables. However, it is limited to one processor (though a dual-core is still considered one processor) and 2 GB per database.

The free versions of Visual Studio 2005 (if you’re a programmer) include some decent database tools, although not as generally useful as the tools that come with the commercial versions of SQL Server or Oracle.

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