As seen on talk.maemo.org (screenshots at the bottom of the post please quote author if you use any of the media)

PortaBase is an application for managing one-table database files. Notable features include:

  • String, Integer, Decimal, Boolean, Note (multi-line text), Date, Time, Calculation, Sequence, Image, and Enum column types
  • Custom data views (subsets of the columns in any order)
  • Filter the displayed rows using sets of conditions
  • Sort the rows by any combination of columns, each in ascending or descending order
  • Add, delete, rearrange, and rename columns at any time
  • View summary statistics for columns (total, average, min, max, etc.)
  • Import and export support for CSV and XML
  • Optional data file encryption
  • Simple calculator widget for entering numeric data

I personally use PortaBase as a media collection inventory, shopping list, TODO list, address book, password manager, financial tracker, and photo organizer, among other things.

The feature set is fairly robust for its initial Maemo release because PortaBase started its life as an application for the Sharp Zaurus PDAs, and also got ported to Linux and Windows PCs years ago. Development stalled when the Zaurus community fractured into multiple ROMs, with minor differences between them and all using increasingly outdated libraries; maintaining it all just took too much work. But now that Qt 4 is available on Maemo, I’ve done a major housecleaning of the code and released PortaBase 2.0 beta 1 for Diablo, Fremantle, Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X, and Windows. That’s still a lot of platforms, but the fact that they’re all using Qt 4.5 or higher makes it much easier to manage.

This beta release has been uploaded to extras-devel for both Diablo and Fremantle. I have the Diablo version installed on my N810 and have started using it daily as a replacement for my Zaurus; I’ve found a few bugs that I need to fix for the next release, but it’s certainly usable. The Fremantle version has been developed in the SDK for PR1.2; I don’t think the current binary will install on an N900 due to the ongoing transition in naming of the Qt 4 packages, but it should be set to go whenever PR1.2 is released. If that takes too much longer, I’ll try uploading a version that’ll work with the Qt packages already in extras-devel (although I gather there are some annoying bugs in those).

Because so much of the code had to be rewritten in porting it from Qt 2 to Qt 4, and because there’s a lot of new code to support UI conventions on Maemo and the Mac, I’ve labeled this as a beta release. Please try it out and report any problems you encounter so I can fix them before the next release. Even if you’re an N900 user waiting impatiently for PR1.2, try out one of the desktop OS versions in the meantime; you can get your database files ready for use, and possibly identify some cross-platform bugs early so they get fixed before you start using PortaBase on your phone.

Let me know if you have suggestions for improvement, interest in contributing or updating a translation, desire to contribute in some other way, or any other questions or comments.