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Ask HN: Access alternatives?

6 points by mcantor ↗ HN
A friend of mine is computer savvy, but not a developer. She helps run a nonprofit organization with a bi-monthly gathering; it has an entry charge that is cheaper for members of the organization. She wants a way to keep track of attendance, memberships, renewals, and so forth, for the eventual purpose of doing some basic trend analysis.

When she said she was thinking of using Access, I cringed and reflexively barked, "ACCESS IS EVIL!" Wisely discarding my knee-jerk evangelism, she asked me for alternatives. After Googling around for a while, I didn't really find anything that seemed like it would fill the same niche for her.

The web developer in me is thinking, "She just needs a dead simple CRUD app, like rails on top of a simple sqlite scehma." But, that's probably outside the scope of her computer skills to set up. Is there actually something out there that I can suggest to her without implicitly obliging myself to weeks or months of here-and-there tech support?

11 comments

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davidw
OpenOffice has something similar, I think.
mcantor
I heard about that, but, is it actually any better than MS Access, or is it just an alternative for an alternative's sake? I'll have to keep Googling...
hellotoby
Well, it's a free alternative which is the main differentiator here.
ilovecheese
> She just needs a dead simple CRUD app, like rails on top of a simple sqlite scehma

No she doesn't. She needs Access because her needs are exactly what it's designed for.

csbrooks
Will Excel (or some other free spreadsheet) not suffice here?
icey
I'd say Access or DabbleDB would be the right way to go. If she already knows how to use Access then it's a no-brainer.
runjake
Just have her use Access and keep your evangelism to yourself, cripes!

Are you seriously thinking a CRUD RoR app might be a better solution for her?

jasonlbaptiste
I'm kind of amazed no one has knocked it out of the park with a web version of Access. Blist kinda tried, but they seemed to have gotten too bloated as a startup. Wasn't there a YC company working on something like this?
david927
From what you've described, she just needs Excel, but if it's more complex than it looks, Access is actually a fine alternative.

I do think you're right, though, that there is a place for a competitor to Access. My startup intends to compete in that space.

turtle4
The closest competitor to Access is FileMaker Pro.

But I don't see anything wrong with her using either excel or Access for the type of thing you are talking about. No need to overcomplicate.