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Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die

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Re: Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die

#81

Post by drblast »

jotakami wrote: post #59

A number of years ago I was in the Navy and worked in an electronics shop on an aircraft carrier. We were responsible for calibrating and repairing all the test and measurement equipment for the entire ship as well as the squadrons that we carried with us. Easily over 10k individual pieces of equipment, each of which had to be calibrated on a specific schedule. Most of this data was managed centrally, and we sent/rec…

Huh, similar story here. The nuclear department on my carrier needed to produce this monthly report for training hours that would take them a ton of manual effort. There was no budget at all for any kind of automation but Access was on every machine.

I know what I'm doing with databases. I never want to use Access if I don't have to. But it has the enviable property of "no server administration required" which meant that we could backup the DB to a shared drive and people after me could modify the thing without being a DBA.

The amount of time that database saved really is mind-boggling.

Re: Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die

#82

Post by AcerbicZero »

jotakami wrote: post #59

A number of years ago I was in the Navy and worked in an electronics shop on an aircraft carrier. We were responsible for calibrating and repairing all the test and measurement equipment for the entire ship as well as the squadrons that we carried with us. Easily over 10k individual pieces of equipment, each of which had to be calibrated on a specific schedule. Most of this data was managed centrally, and we sent/rec…

Thats hilarious. I did something similar with comms equipment on my first deployment to Iraq, because as a lowly little E-3 I wasn't going to let some $80k piece gear I signed for disappear, and then pay for myself (although that was extremely unlikely anyway).

It ended up being useful enough that some folks up at division copied it and used it for tracking all of the laptops they were signing out, along with the paperwork, which you can't escape regardless of where you are.

Re: Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die

#84

Post by codeulike »

SigmundA wrote: post #30

I have a special place in my heart for Access, its where I first started making money writing software and learned SQL and VB. Its where I really felt like I was making something that solved real world problems for people, quickly at that. It was actually amazing how far it could scale, you could put a shared MDB file out on a Novell network share and have 30 concurrent users with no server app at all, users just dou…

Salesforce, the core database/CRUD bit of it if you ignore all the stuff they've purchased and tacked-on in the last few years, is essentially 'Access in the cloud', in terms of the sorts of things you can do and the ease with which you can do it, and how far you can stretch it before it starts to get cumbersome. And yes, they are making a killing.

edit: And if that sounds easy, imagine how you would go about upgrading and patching and extending your access-like cloud platform twice a year without any significant breakage of any of your customers varied and extensive customisations, and without any significant downtime, and keep that up for 20 years. Thats the thing that Salesforce are good at, and not many people appreciate how difficult it is.

Re: Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die

#85

Post by codeulike »

phs318u wrote: post #7

The reason that both Access and Excel use is so prevalent in corporate “shadow IT” land is because there are many parts of the business that have problems for which only a negative or marginal business-case can be made for IT to solve it (given the “get out of bed” costs of most IT departments). It’s a barrier-to-entry problem. Excel and Access are cheap enough and fly under the corporate IT radar (no involvement nee…

Yeah exactly. Working in an IT Dept when someone said "ah they've built a spreadsheet to do it, but now they want us to add that functionality to the main DB" we'd all roll our eyes because it was another lashed-together thing that we would have to unpick and re-implement. But the fact is, if they'd come straight to us and asked us to do it instead of doing it in Excel first, they would have had nothing, for years and years.

Re: Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die

#86

Post by Roboprog »

lsllc wrote: post #44

Not forgetting FoxPro and dBase & friends!

I think Access is more like Paradox, with code and data bundled together (for better or worse), rather than numerous PRG, DBF and index files that have to be “deployed” together.

Yeah, I did a lot of dBase / Clipper back in the mid 80s for rent money while I was in college. Liked the ease of use, but index corruption on a multi user network killed it off. And you have to write code, vs allowing users to accrete stuff on the screen with a GUI.

Re: Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die

#88

Post by benhurmarcel »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #78
SigmundA wrote: post #30

I have a special place in my heart for Access, its where I first started making money writing software and learned SQL and VB. Its where I really felt like I was making something that solved real world problems for people, quickly at that. It was actually amazing how far it could scale, you could put a shared MDB file out on a Novell network share and have 30 concurrent users with no server app at all, users just dou…

Isn't Airtable considered like modern day Access?

Except it requires your IT department to contract it, which makes it a non-starter for most "shadow IT" uses where Access excels.

Re: Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die

#89

Post by segfaultbuserr »

a_cool_username wrote: post #69
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the story. I can imagine that, as I said > creating a glorified Excel for some specific office tasks What I'm interested in is cases of using Access for something other than a specific office task - it seems Access is still used for some serious business in many businesses (pun not intended).

Well, my point is that I think it's entirely possible that the only real use for MS Access is as a glorified Excel spreadsheet. That seems like a fine use case with a pretty significant market share! When you get right down to it, that's all most small businesses that use "real" relational databases do with them, either.

Good point.

Re: Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die

#90

Post by benhurmarcel »

dexwiz wrote: post #26
phs318u wrote: post #7

The reason that both Access and Excel use is so prevalent in corporate “shadow IT” land is because there are many parts of the business that have problems for which only a negative or marginal business-case can be made for IT to solve it (given the “get out of bed” costs of most IT departments). It’s a barrier-to-entry problem. Excel and Access are cheap enough and fly under the corporate IT radar (no involvement nee…

I think Developers also underestimate IT Setup Costs for a DB since its so easy to do it locally. Setting up a simple RDBMS like MySql or Postgres and skinning with with a basic, out of the box UI is an afternoon of work if you need to look up commands, or minutes if you have done it recently. But setting up something for a Team immediately opens questions like Access Rights (Can we limit this just to the team, or ev…

Plus, you need a server (ie. obtain one, set it up, and maintain it). With Access you just host it on the team's shared drive.

In a large organization, getting a small server when you don't work in IT is not simple at all.

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