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

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

#211

Post by drittich » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:58 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #175

mdorazio wrote: post #5

As the author points out, Access fills an interesting niche where Excel isn't quite enough, but a SQL database and all the stuff that goes along with it is way too much. On top of that, it's completely local so you don't have to pay for licenses or worry about data policies. That niche is big enough to sustain Access pretty much indefinitely. I think the lesson here is that business users more often than not want som…

I'm not clear on why you are referring to Access as an alternative to a "SQL based application". Access's SQL dialect is extremely annoying sometimes, but using SQL is a very significant (if not the most) reason for utilizing it rather than Excel. I went around and around trying to find a way to query Excel "tables" with SQL or something similar, but eventually gave up. There is something called DAX, but it seems dif…

If you are on Windows there is QueryStorm, and it works amazingly well IMO.

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

#212

Post by projektfu » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:59 AM UTC

krilly wrote: post #180

jdfellow wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much effort it would take to build a desktop application providing a similar user experience to Access, using SQLite.

Open/LibreOffice Base does have backends for MySQL and PostgreSQL already

I tried open office base about 10 years ago and it was almost but not quite impossible to use. Has it improved?

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

#213

Post by F_J_H » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:01 AM UTC

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…

Check out Oracle application Express (APEX). HN loves to hate Oracle, but it is a great tool for a building crud applications and dashboards.

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

#214

Post by egdod » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:09 AM UTC

> You've completed your member preview for this month, but when you sign up for a free Medium account, you get one more story.

Literally worse than blogspot in every way.

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

#215

Post by hamstrungtw19 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:15 AM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #110

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 inpu…

> 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.

That's funny. I work at a very large fab, and of all the places I've worked, this is the one that's most in need of the sort of in-office hot path optimizations you mention, and doubly worse is that it's the least susceptible to allowing someone to do anything about it.

(In fact, it's regressing. This month saw a fab-wide rollout of a document management system that has caused a ~10x increase in wall clock time for attaching files to emails or through forms on the intranet. Now consider what that means when the company exhibits a pathological form of the passing-MS-Office-documents-around-to-each-other mindset...)

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

#216

Post by ethbro » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:16 AM UTC

akdor1154 wrote: post #168

linza wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At least at my org it's awful because dev teams wrote / spec'd their own UX for "their forms."

Which, as you might imagine, resulted in a huge number of multiple choice, similarly-named properties, with all options also being inscrutablely named.

Long story short: programmers are terrible at UX.

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

#217

Post by dev_dull » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

jdfellow wrote: post #177

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if sqlite could become this in the future.

I wonder how much effort it would take to build a desktop application providing a similar user experience to Access, using SQLite.

I tried doing this once with Go, hoping for a static binary, but SQLite library requires glibc.

There’s a huge need for a sql-compatible sqite-like database for this purpose in Go.

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

#218

Post by bdcravens » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:30 AM UTC

MisterOctober wrote: post #147

bdcravens wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Airtable is great, but it’s lack of aggregate functions really restricts it.

I certainly agree it's no replacement for a proper DB when full SQL functionality is needed, but it does have basic aggregates like count(), sum(), etc, available as formula fields: https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/203255215-For...

Yes, but those formulas are scoped to the row, not the worksheet (you can't pass in a range of cells; each row essentially treats its own columns as local variables). SUM() means something completely different in Airtable than in every other spreadsheet out there. I've built out some beautiful Airtables only to find I had to switch to using Google sheets since I couldn't total up the value of a column, something I've been able to do since Lotus 123 in the 90s.

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

#219

Post by burmer » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:44 AM UTC

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #172

drblast wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder if sqlite could become this in the future.

SQLite with a form builder would do it.

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

#220

Post by tyingq » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:47 AM UTC

Access is still in the "Intro to Computing" classes in a bunch of lower level US Colleges. I suppose because they don't want to update their materials.