Alternatives to using forms in Writer
In OpenOffice.org 3, the Base component provides an alternative way to access a data source. There are a lot of similarities between forms in Base and Writer, but one may be better for a particular task than the other. Base is appropriate only if the form accesses a data source; you would not use it for simple forms.
Most other OpenOffice.org components—Calc, Impress, and Draw—also support forms in almost the same way that Writer does.