Ask HN: Why isn't there a modern MS Access clone?
HN, this is something that I've always been interested in: Why isn't there a modern piece of software akin to Microsoft’s Access? I know there are plenty of issues in scaling these kind of systems, and that these kind of platforms can feel clunky and unwieldy but I still find it surprising that there isn’t a simple platform for creating CRUD apps. It doesn’t seem like an unachievable goal to me: you need the ability to create forms, design database tables, manage user permissions, manage data workflow (ie: send an sms if <condition>, seek approval from <user role> for <action>), and view/search data. I’m certain these features would be useful for all kinds of business scenarios where building, maintaining, and hosting a custom solution isn’t worthwhile, or would be unideal compared to using a standardised tool. Are there tools in this space that I’m missing? If not, why isn’t this being pursued? Eagerly looking forward to your thoughts.
113 comments
[ 60.5 ms ] story [ 2616 ms ] thread[1] http://www.libreoffice.org/discover/base/
It was a disaster and none of those 4GLs are around anymore. There is no interface that's as easy as sending an email to a developer saying "I need an app that does this..."
I know that I've sat down to learn access (and later LibreOffice Base) but by the time I start into it I just think "there's really no advantage to using this over just mysql and a web page front end" and stop learning.
For a front office/business person who doesn't do IT as a full time job but has a reasonable grasp of technology, they can create something "good enough" quite easily, without having to go through the whole Corporate IT process.
This is also why Corporate IT doesn't like the Front Office getting Access, as they still ask for support when their home-brew app goes wrong.
The Access contraption then gets an ODBC backend to a proper database. Then parts of the Access Visual Basic spaghetti get ported to PHP. Other parts get ported to JSP. It ends up getting entirely ported - but for lack of budget for a full rewrite, the previously developed JSP parts are preserved. The whole thing doesn't take advantage of contemporary UI patterns because it closely matches the design of the original Access database. I'll spare you all the episodes of crippling slowness and the data corruption catastrophes that triggered each improvement increment.
On the other hand, the users managed to build themselves a serviceable tool when the IT wouldn't even speak to them without a ten-months project - and then they foisted it upon IT... From their point of view the ugly ten-years journey has been a success !
1) I didn't know that Filemaker was still around.
2) I didn't know that it is an Apple subsidiary.
3) Pity there's no Linux version, I'd use LibreOffice Base if you're in Linux as someone else here has pointed out.
I ended up doing an Access database and created a few forms on top of it, including automation for automatically exporting order forms as Word documents. There were a few gotchas in writing VBA but overall the process was easy to pick up and be productive quickly.
Building apps with clicks not code is the utopia these people are seeking, so the vendors will do everything they can to appeal to that.
There are literally heaps in this category, but one that really started it all is Salesforce and their force.com product, they are selling the dream like no-one else.
More frequently coming up now is MS PowerApps and MS Flow coupled with either SharePoint lists or Microsoft's Common Data Service because they are included for free in the Enterprise Office 365 SKUs.
Dynamics 365 offers a lot in this space but is more pricey (the $10 team license is good value though). Zoho Creator is another example too.
Airtable has forms https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/206058268-Gui... but it doesn't have the same UI form builder kind of thing.
The two that seem to be the closest to me are Google's AppMaker (https://developers.google.com/appmaker/) and Bubble.is (https://bubble.is/). I call these two out because they both allow for coding when the "default path" runs into a wall, and both include more than just forms and tables. However, they both still have warts. Appmaker, for example, has a pricing model problem. It's $10/user (GSuite), so you can't use it to build anything that involves casual outside users, like an employment applicant tracking system.
The next tier down are somewhat similar products that have been around longer. Like Quickbase (http://www.quickbase.com/), Caspio (https://www.caspio.com/), Airtable (https://airtable.com/), Zoho Creator (https://www.zoho.com/creator/), Rajic (https://www.ragic.com/), and Knack (https://www.knack.com/). These all work great if the app you're making fits into their somewhat fixed view of the world, but hit a hard wall if it doesn't. Some of them also have the same pricing model problem I mentioned in the preceding paragraph.
The one I really thought was going to emerge as the market leader was DabbleDB. Sadly, Twitter acquihired them and shut it down. Here's one of the demo videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY It was very ahead of it's time back in 2007.
I can't remember if I learned that in a video or a post somewhere by Avi Bryant, though. I was really interested in Smalltalk in 2009/2010 and I remember seeing Dabble DB coming up a lot.
There's a button to view the transcript of the video too.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-so-many-startups-are-bein...
Very easy to use and you can create basic applications without additional programming. Although of course it helps if you know how-to write code.
There's an embedded database that you can use out of the box. But you can also use any of the main SQL Database engines.
For building commercial applications you have to buy a developers license.
For building your own non commercial applications you can use their free personal license. [1]
Disclaimer: I use the language professionally and run an open source website that has free tools and code examples in DataFlex.
[0] http://www.dataaccess.com
[1] https://www.dataaccess.com/Resources/Licensing/DataFlex-Pers...
Had no idea it was still going.
30 years ago there was only console mode, albeit in different flavors (unix/DOS). Nowadays the main product is Windows oriented and also has a Web offering. You can still buy a console mode linux version, but it hasn't had updates in over a decade. Yes it runs and works on recent Linux versions, no I would not recommend spending any money on that.
Your 30 years old data files however could still be read. You might need to migrate it to a newer format if you want to extend and change things, but it would still work.
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 employees...but I guess it can become unwieldy. I know I saw some amazing things built with Access back in the day...
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 standpoint. AFAIK that's why it was abandoned; there was no way to keep the functionality and easy defaults that users liked while making it secure. It scares companies shitless to have critical financial data sitting in Access databases...
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 developers.
Sticking that above my desk
This is one reason why (I guess) largish companies even have or create apps to manage other apps - like an app to manage (as in know about, not really manage as in monitor) all the other apps in the company. Like a list of apps app. Initially I wondered whether it was overkill but later realized that at that scale, such automation can be useful. But I guess it can go to the other extreme too and become a time sink.
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.
We value as much feedback as possible. Single user is free, and we are completely flexible on price - we just would like to see more people using it.
It is loosely inspired by Trello.
For small-ish companies that aren't very technical, I would think the Office suite still has a strong attach rate. Regardless of whether or not Access is the best tool for the job, inertia is powerful.
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.
Great product.
http://www.matssoft.com/product/
Doing well in the enterprise sector in the UK. Recently acquired, though for relative peanuts:
https://www.youinvest.co.uk/articles/stockmarketwire/123954/...
Then again, I tend to be very skeptical of such tools, having seen them in action in the 00s, where they were very poor as a medium/long-term solution that ultimately hindered, not helped.
Started as a Mac only RDB in the '80s. Now runs on Mac and Win, as a single user, from a server, or can be compiled as a standalone app. Rich development environment, includes web server, PHP, SQL and a lot more. There is a small but vibrant community of developers but is accessible to anyone with some technical experience.
http://www.glom.org/
http://kexi-project.org/about.html