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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

#101

Post by alexis_fr »

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…

Modern-day Access: Filemaker Pro was the contemporary competitor and still lives and has usergroups today; Airtables and similar (all SQL-based form managers) are the modern options.

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

#102

Post by thrower123 »

alkonaut wrote: post #12

Is there a modern and/or open alternative to this? E.g a SQLite + electron or local web client thing where you could build a simple inventory or similar but you should also be able to scale it to client server when the need occurs 10 years down. Note that any number of cloud startups don’t count as an alternative to access. When these things start it’s as an excel sheet with data that no one will go through the enter…

As soon as you bring HTML and JS in, projects choke and die. There is just too much goldbricking and fiddling and fussing and yak shaving around possible, and almost none of it is in service of actually making anything. The friction binds the gears up horrifically.

Something like WinForms with SQLite that didn't use Entity Framework would be far better. But really all we want is to get back to VB6 on top of Access. Maybe a few less footguns...

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

#103

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Analemma_ wrote: post #38
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

The amount of people I work with who use Access who do not understand even the very basics of computing is shocking. And half my help tickets now are fixing Access files from multiple users trying to use them at once...

The point though is that this isn't Access's fault. If Access didn't exist, those people wouldn't be magically replaced by expert DBAs who knew how to set up a perfect solution in Postgres or whatever. They'd be the same people, except hacking together some Rube Goldberg machine in Excel or Google Spreadsheets, with even worse functionality and none of the AD controls that Access at least gives you.

I'm not really arguing with the article, just commenting on my experience with the undead. Access is a brilliant piece of work for what it enables. I think it's a little unfortunate it isn't better supported, and that more software isn't built like it.

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

#104

Post by TomVDB »

fortran77 wrote: post #16
smacktoward wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access also generally comes bundled with Office, so for a lot of people it's the tool they already have at hand. And people are always going to reach first for a tool they already have at hand, if one's available that looks even remotely like it will suit their needs. There are probably better database solutions for just about anything you'd want to build with Access, but getting something new requires doing research…

I had No Idea it was installed on my machine! We pay for an Office licence per-seat here and, sure enough, I looked at installed programs and there it was.

Same here: no idea it was on my machine. But it is. It even has the modern look Win 10. I thought it has been sunset by Microsoft years ago.

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

#105

Post by intended »

WorldMaker wrote: post #64
deckar01 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My organization recently adopted Office 365. One of the new apps was "PowerApps", a web-based GUI app builder. I popped open an example app inspected a button and, to my horror, I found the program logic was Excel syntax one-liners. When I checked the data binding for the app, it pointed to an XLSX spreadsheet on OneDrive. Time is a flat circle...

With 64-bit Excel capable of working with up to 4GB files, it sometimes feels like Excel itself ate/replaced Access for certain classes of business and shadow IT use.

Yup. Power BI reinforced that impression.

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

#106

Post by flukus »

radcon wrote: post #58
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 don't disagree, but isn't it a sign of much deeper issues if this "Shadow IT" land exists at your company in the first place? Why is it that experienced programmers can't efficiently solve a problem that a business user can handle in Access? Are they under-staffed? Neck-deep in spaghetti code? Lacking business knowledge and the opportunity to acquire it? Bottle-necked by a lack of business analysts or testers? I he…

Agreed, I think it's because developers like to over engineer everything and the managers like to over engineer the processes.

So many of these access excel solutions should be a days worth of work, simple perl cgi scripts with a minimalist UI deployed by rsync. Instead we have to use our super "productive" modern frameworks, split everything into a thousand files (god forbid you embed an sql query in the only place it's called), add unit tests, etc. There's certainly times for the later approach, but most businesses need much more of the former.

So because developers don't have a reasonable platform to pinch off random little projects others step in.

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

#107

Post by thrower123 »

Since I haven't seen anybody mention it yet, another old contender in this class was Lotus Notes/Domino. NoSQL before NoSQL was cool.

I worked with an ex-Lotus guy once, and he always raved about how easy it was to build out LOB apps with it and have a pretty capable little database in a single .nsf file.

IBM has washed their hands of it, but I know of a lot of big corporation, and especially militaries, that are still running applications on top of Notes.

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

#108

Post by alexis_fr »

fencepost wrote: post #80
tracker1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Open/Libre-Office have options for this. You can also use Access as a front end for another db (odbc) backend pretty easily. I'd probably do a web app myself, but that's just me. I know a lot of people that cut their programming teeth on Access apps, including distributed ones.

I'd probably do a web app myself Running on? Wait, you mean I have to get IT to set up a server for me? Who's responsible for maintaining that? Backups? They're going to do that for something used by only 10 people that saves us maybe 20-30 hours a week? How much are they going to charge my department for this?

A company like Atlassian famously often had their first install at customers performed by employees on a rogue box under-the-table. Seems like it’s how one introduced software in the 2000s.

I wonder whether today’s equivalent could be made on Raspberry Pi. It requires a few tricks, but there is so much demand from managers who could afford paying 50€ out of pocket.

Of course, having a rogue box plugged to the internal network with a Wifi and Bluetooth chip on board is not IT-approved. Can it be bypassed?

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

#109

Post by taffer »

mamcx wrote: post #56
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…

My dream is to build a modern take of the fox/dbase family. I starting with the inner language http://tablam.org Access, as concept, is great . Is exactly what many need. But it have a lot of small deficiencies that make it disliked by developers. I have used FoxPro, and it have almost all the right things instead (Fox is Access, but goooood!... except a bit less user friendly). I wish I could dedicate to build this.…

I really like the idea of developing a modern Access alternative, but why are you trying to create a new language? Aren't QBE and SQL sufficient?

Why not something that is like a cloud SaaS version of Access, but can be extended with some procedures and later used as a GraphQL backend like Hasura?

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

#110

Post by bob1029 »

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…

Being able to automate forms can absolutely revolutionize some businesses. Many business owners have no idea the extent to which automation is feasible here. I have seen fully manual paper process (printers/scanners/pen & ink/shredders/etc.) go into 100% digital realm and the impact it had on the business. It really is incredible the difference it makes. The most interesting factor was the fact that now that the inputs are captured in a computer, we can run business rules against those inputs computationally. I.e., prevent generation of forms you would have to otherwise manually revise and resubmit after the fact. Then someone figured out you could start plugging in other business systems to your rules engine and tracking state...

I think it is a fun and compelling challenge to see just how much of the business you can put "on rails" with computers and various integrations. I have some background in semiconductor manufacturing, and the degree of automation I witnessed there got to me in a really deep way. Experiencing a massive factory that can literally run for hours-to-days without a single human inside is something else. I feel a lot of businesses can strive towards similar goals. Being able to fully-automate manufacturing of silicon chips is an incredibly opulent affair, but if you can simply automate a paper-bound business process that is on a hot-path (I.e. used many times a day), it could potentially save a struggling business.

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