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Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?

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Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?

#81
We're doing exactly this at Sonadier (https://www.sonadier.com). We distill the app-making process down to a simple form builder, while giving technical users the ability to write client and server-side JavaScript for extra interactivity. We're doing a full design refresh in the next few weeks, and that update includes a visual workflow builder. We do have a pretty in-depth permission system already built in.

Further down, someone mentioned that a big problem with Access is the proliferation of "autonomous, undocumented systems" built by different teams. I think we shine here - since we're web-based you can host all your forms on one account. In addition, you can share specific create/read/update/destroy permissions with any other organization on the platform - we want to make data exchange painless.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?

#82

I figured we need a summary in here. Open source MS access alternatives (indexed from other comments): There's MS access of course https://products.office.com/en-au/access Open Source LibreOffice Base https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/base/ Kexi https://www.kde.org/applications/office/kexi/ Gnome DB http://www.gnome-db.org/ Lazarus (better for programming, worse for DB) https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ Web based Oracl…

Outsystems, Mendix, Alpha Anywhere, m-Power, Wavemaker, Microsoft PowerApps and many less known others.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?

#83

I figured we need a summary in here. Open source MS access alternatives (indexed from other comments): There's MS access of course https://products.office.com/en-au/access Open Source LibreOffice Base https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/base/ Kexi https://www.kde.org/applications/office/kexi/ Gnome DB http://www.gnome-db.org/ Lazarus (better for programming, worse for DB) https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ Web based Oracl…

as a former Delphi programmer - seeing Lazarus as MS Access alternative really hurts. :)

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?

#85
Modern XBase clones like Flagship (Clipper clone, sort of), Harbour project (ditto), and many others come close. You still have to do some programming, but it is not too difficult for an IT-savvy non-programmer to pick up. Clipper apps still run many small businesses in India (I know for sure) and likely many other countries too. Data entry in such apps is extremely fast once the operator gets used to the app. They did have a few useful features like drop-down lists, incremental search in that (programmed), etc.

Some of these clones will have a DB CRUD language similar to the original dBASE, some of them might have SQL support too. I know that some years ago, many of the dBASE competitors (and dBASE IV or V itself, plus Foxpro) had somewhat decent SQL support (though not with all the features of a full-fledged RDBMS).

Some medium to large LOB apps have been built with XBASE tech too, in the past. I worked on a somewhat big one several years ago, for a switchgear products company. It was like parts of an ERP. It was in Foxpro for Windows on Novell Netware, and we used the SQL in it heavily. I remember writing tons of SQL reports near the end of the project (after the other CRUD work was done), and getting a bit bored with that at first, until I worked out that there were some patterns of permutations / combinations in the kinds of reports needed (by country, by region, by product category, by product accessory, by date, by order's commercial terms, etc. etc.), and then enjoyed the work a bit more, by working out how to do it systematically, changing one parameter at a time, so as to reuse as much of the previous report's SQL code as possible :)

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?

#86
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also end up with a mess of VBScript code that isn't versioned. When something breaks and someone calls IT, it really helps if IT knows the system exists. In a large organization, supporting disjointed business processes (or worse, fragile amateurish integrations) costs more than the software. At scale, consistency matters more than performance variance in some areas. Access is also a nightmare from a security sta…

Yeah, but these things exist because they started as experiments which did not warrant getting a team of developers to burn through a million dollars for the first version. Its really hard to know, in advance, which internal applications are worthy of a development team. As for nightmares... there's plenty to go around for everyone. Some of the worst nightmares are created by large teams of highly paid and skilled de…

> Some of the worst nightmares are created by large teams of highly paid and skilled developers.

Sticking that above my desk

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?

#87

fieldbook.com seems to check a lot of your boxes. it has plenty of rough edges but has a solid relational model and is fun to use. my only complaint is that api access is really expensive (making it cost-prohibitive to most HN readers) but the main product is cheap/free.

Fieldbook co-founder here, thanks for the mention. If anyone has a particular need for lots of API calls, message us and we might be able to work something out!

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?

#88
post #18

One of the things several colleagues have said to me over the years is that Access tended to be a dangerous tool in a large organisation: like Excel but on crack. You end up with a large number of autonomous, undocumented systems built on an ad-hoc basis by personnel who were often not even in a technical role. Personally I think that sounds like a great way to leverage the domain expertise of lots of different emplo…

I used to work at JPMorgan. We had an official acronym for these tools... UDTs, or User Developed Tools.

They initially started when ops teams were told a custom report for a client would be too expensive/slow to build properly by tech, so they would DIY a report in excel.

These started to get out of hand, and after a few years they numbered in thousands and had evolved from excel sheets with macros into full fledged Access DBs with ODBC connections into our data warehouse. A specialist team was created in Ops to build and support ever more complex UDTs, they were called the UDT Team.

Problem was that these were poorly documented and often done without consultation with Tech, so we would unknowingly break loads of downstream stuff whenever we embarked on new projects of our own.

Fun times. Plenty of stories.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?

#89
As others have pointed out, there are lots of products that fit something like this description. The challenge with Access and other app builders is summed up in Dietzler’s Law for Access (from http://nealford.com/memeagora/2013/01/22/why_everyone_eventu...):

“Every Access project will eventually fail because, while 80% of what the user wants is fast and easy to create, and the next 10% is possible with difficulty, ultimately the last 10% is impossible because you can’t get far enough underneath the built-in abstractions, and users always want 100% of what they want.”

This is why the product I'm working on, Fieldbook (https://fieldbook.com), avoids the “app builder” approach and focuses on just being a spreadsheet-like information tool that supports querying and relational modeling.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?

#90

fieldbook.com seems to check a lot of your boxes. it has plenty of rough edges but has a solid relational model and is fun to use. my only complaint is that api access is really expensive (making it cost-prohibitive to most HN readers) but the main product is cheap/free.

Fieldbook co-founder here, thanks for the mention. If anyone has a particular need for lots of API calls, message us and we might be able to work something out!

That's great to hear, I'll follow up via email.

Great product.

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