Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by brisance » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

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?

Does Airtable still require internet access? That's a non-starter for many businesses which only have intermittent internet access.

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

#162

Post by heelix » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

louis8799 wrote: post #159

Coming from a banking background, I know that Access is heavily used in the financial industry, including Investment Banks.

My Bride use to work for one of the big 'third bucket' credit card companies. Someone had discovered the northwinds tutorial database, changed the labels, and reworked the business processes to fit the queries - all tables were left as found. The best part was eventually, after acquisition, they had a directive that all databases must be ported over to Oracle... and some soul got to see the horrors of what was done and convert it.

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

#163

Post by smitty1e » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:34 AM UTC

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…

My first serious effort to program (Access97) was an automated engineering log in Access that extracted my operating hours for the month and wrote them out in MS Word as a draft Navy message.

It really didn't have much in the way of error checking to ensure that the state of the equipment was consistent i.e., you didn't start a generator or main engine twice in a row.

Which became crucial when I handed my baby over to the FNG at transfer time, and went on house-hunting orders.

Came back, ran the report, and he'd gooned the data so bad that we ran our equipment for negative time.

Which was an outstanding business opportunity! Run the hours off of the equipment! Yes! We can name our price for this device!

Other than the part where time doesn't exactly work that way, the idea was great.

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

#164

Post by wil421 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:35 AM UTC

mynegation wrote: post #160

wil421 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ServiceNow is a lot easier for admins/developers to use for workflow automation. In my opinion it’s a little easier than Salesforce but it could become bloated like Salesforce if it want already. Quickbase is another one I worked with but I was migrating workflows off of it. Quickbase was good for non IT people but not much better than Access or Excel.

A lot depends on what is actually implemented on top of these systems. I absolutely loathe servicenow because of multi page multilevel forms with horrible, ugly, no good UX I have to deal with.

Yea not the worst UX I’ve seen but far from the best. They give you enough rope to hang yourself and most companies do. They have a new agent workspace to help improve usability.

I loathe Workday. Performance reviews and taking time off have unneeded steps and comments in weird places. The flat and colorful UI looks nice but it’s hard to find stuff.

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

#165

Post by foobar1962 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #144

alexis_fr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately it silently fails. Years ago I worked for a company that claimed to have largest Filemaker Pro database in the southern hemisphere. One day there was some sort of disk issue and filemaker silently failed, then for months it kept pretending that everything was fine, it just wasn't writing to disk. This lasted until a power outage one day when the company discovered it had lost months of customer data, no…

I'd put that on the DBAs. Once a week they should have been pulling down backups and testing for problems. They'd have also discovered the problem with the backups themselves.

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

#166

Post by MR4D » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

It would be great if we had a SQLite interface for Excel.

That would get us halfway there, and make it easy for companies to use (getting off of excel is a different proposition altogether).

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

#167

Post by hermitdev » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:46 AM UTC

I once worked with a piece of 3rd party financial software, that I won't name.

We used their reporting functionality to extract data to import to our firms systems. Access was their intermediary data store. SQL Server -> Access -> CSV.

I had to support this, so I was one of only 2 people at the firm that was allowed to have Access installed.

Not necessarily Access's fault, but these reports failed routinely. Ended up with a Python script wrapping the whole process and retrying so I didn't get called at night. probably not Access's fault, but still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Access is regarded as a toy, even more so than MySQL.

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

#168

Post by akdor1154 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:47 AM UTC

linza wrote: post #138

wil421 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ServiceNow is a lot easier for admins/developers to use for workflow automation. In my opinion it’s a little easier than Salesforce but it could become bloated like Salesforce if it want already. Quickbase is another one I worked with but I was migrating workflows off of it. Quickbase was good for non IT people but not much better than Access or Excel.

I was curious about ServiceNow and googled it and was excited as they offer demos. But they require registration and a lot of information about myself, so i stopped. Is it not meant for small businesses perhaps?

As a developer who is forced to use a service now interface for interacting with any other part of my organisation it's fucking awful in terms of user interface and friction. Unsure if that is because of our workplace setup or if it's intrinsic to the platform.

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

#169

Post by topspin » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:49 AM UTC

thrower123 wrote: post #107

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 sti…

I've brought up Notes in the past. My encounter was with a synthetic DNA company that was spread all over the planet; two US states, two European countries and Japan. Notes delivered reliable, distributed databases to all of these sites using marginal hardware, intermittent network connections and without much maintenance.

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

#170

Post by campfireveteran » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:51 AM UTC

EvanAnderson wrote: post #135

alexis_fr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FileMaker, in my experience, attracts a certain smug developer who simply cannot believe that there are more industrial-strength database systems and that FileMaker can't solve every possible problem in the world. Access devs, at least, don't seem to have that particular quirk.

I wouldn't rag on it or Access too much because it serves/d a purpose: app and data design for less technical users who are busy doing a million other things. I supported several dozen FMP apps at Stanford Student Housing (R&DE) as it was easy for analysts to make something quickly and worked at the scale needed. Later, they used proper databases, reporting, and app-ish tools. FMP ran on a half dozen early Xserves which used goofy, consumer-grade parts inconsistently while looking Apple over-designed.