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Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won't Die

• ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  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...
  • Analemma_ 7y ago
    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.
    • ocdtrekkie 7y ago
      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.
• cheschire 7y ago
  Ugh, what a completely appropriate topic for the week of halloween. Zombies, nightmares, and a lot of late fucking nights saving people from themselves.
• deleted 7y ago
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• mdorazio 7y ago
  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 something that 1) just works, 2) they can actually understand, and 3) doesn't require learning and setting up a bunch of other stuff to maintain or upgrade. It's easy to forget how big of a step up it is from Excel to a SQL-based application (or similar other business needs elsewhere) and how big of a barrier that is.
  • smacktoward 7y ago
    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, getting approval, maybe allocating money, etc. Whereas if you have Office, Access is already sitting there on your computer, just waiting for you to pick it up and start making bad decisions.
    • fortran77 7y ago
      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.
      • TomVDB 7y ago
        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.
  • WorldMaker 7y ago
    Another key niche for Access was that MDB was for too long a time (decades) the only single-file DB format that people could reliably ship around as files / store on network shares / etc. Many a VB6 app used MDB as the underlying storage internals of their file format because it was convenient. SQLite has only relatively recently started to be an option in that niche of single-file databases.
  • perl4ever 7y ago
    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 different just to be different, and nothing is orthogonal and logical - particularly external data is not on an equal footing with tables within your spreadsheet.
• phs318u 7y ago
  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 needed), that these marginal problems can be addressed in a self-serve manner. I’ve worked in organisations that have tried to kill these tools off but unless you can lower the cost-to-play or offer a “better” self/serve alternative, you will fail.
  • asdfman123 7y ago
    Access is the perfect tool for an intelligent, technically-minded person with limited programming experience to create an application to replace spreadsheets. There are a lot of those kinds of people out there, and they're extremely useful in introducing minor optimizations that other people wouldn't be able to find. Access is for that guy who says "I know there's a better way to do this," but doesn't have access (no pun intended) to a team of programmers and a project manager. I didn't major in programming in undergrad but I've taken classes here and there, so in my first job out of college I replaced a really awful system of spreadsheet-jockeying with an Access DB. I considered other options, but that it's self contained and NOT a web application is a feature, not a bug. I couldn't get access to the corporate database, so I just ran the Access DB on a network drive. It's still probably there, ten years later, running happily on its own. Honestly, it seems like the fix for Access... is a better version of Access. It fills a very useful niche, between spreadsheets and full-fledged applications designed by programmers. It's so much easier to make a quick app that works for your organization than get an external team of programmers involved, who will probably tell you "no" or remain unconvinced that you're worth helping. With Access, you don't need political clout, you don't need years of experience, you don't need a title. Just build an Access application and get kudos from everyone in your team for making their lives easier.
    • dsaavy 7y ago
      These are excellent points, I think it’s underestimated how difficult it is to get approval and budget for a small project that doesn’t directly contribute to the bottom line or have huge savings. These small but impactful solutions using Access act as both a stepping stone to greater skill sets, a way to build POCs for non-tech or low-tech people, and to avoid months of politics in big organizations. I’ve had projects that were red-taped before getting off the ground due to resources being placed elsewhere. I then take those project ideas, and instead build them in Access as a POC using shared drives, splitting the database, etc. By the time I have 100 users saying how useful the application is in a couple months, other bigger projects haven’t even finished a project plan. Meanwhile we’re then ready to scale the solution using an appropriate stack and basically can just say “replicate our POC features but improve performance, security, accessibility, etc”. So far that’s worked pretty well for me. In summary: find people’s Excel files with a mess of VBA and formulas —> see if the use case should be expanded —> build POC in Access without permission/budget from a bunch of people —> see how it goes and then plan to scale with the evidence you’ve gathered from your POC.
• segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  This is the question I always wanted to ask, I almost wrote an Ask HN... Who use Microsoft Access in 2019?! An obvious case is creating a glorified/enhanced Excel for some specific office tasks, another case is that some applications use ".mdb" backend. But that's all? edit: What I'm interested in is cases of using Access for something other than a specific Excel-like office task - it seems Access is still used for some serious business in many businesses (pun not intended). Also, if your office does use Access just for Excel-like tasks, but has overused it so much, please comment as well, I'd like to hear your story. Who use Microsoft Access in 2019?
  • downrightmike 7y ago
    The only use case I've seen is a charity using it to manage their donors as a crm.
  • tracker1 7y ago
    Access also makes for a decent CRUD admin interface for any ODBC database, SQL or otherwise.
    • sam_lowry_ 7y ago
      Bingo. It shines as a UI over linked tables.
  • hiei 7y ago
    Warehousing/Distribution industry without budgets for proper ERPs or inventory management.
  • a_cool_username 7y ago
    An acquaintance of mine is an accountant. He uses it when his spreadsheets get too big/busy/complex. He's not "technical", but he is quite intelligent and is very familiar with Excel, has even written a few VB macros here and there. It's perfect for him. I assume the thousands of people just like him are the answer to your question.
    • 7y ago
• woliveirajr 7y ago
  I remember the first Access version. Wasn't cheap (for my budget at the time) and I got it as a birthday gift. Wasn't my first contact with database (dBase III Plus, anyone?) but came with 5 huge manuals that covered a lot of relational databases, and was where I first heard of normalizations rules. If it was easy for a teen in the first months with a computer, must be easy nowadays for any non-tech person who doesn't receive enought attention from IT because building a system would cost too much for each sprint/function points/hours. And it won't die unless things like that change.
  • GrumpyNl 7y ago
    I started to write with Dbase 1 and 2
    • steveeq1 7y ago
      There was no "dbase 1", it started as "dbase 2" because Ashton Tate didn't want the product to sound premature.
      • teh_klev 7y ago
        To be fair, they probably mean dBase II and dBase III. Although they could mean Vulcan and dBase II, which is less likely. I started my "database" programming career on dBase II in the early 80's and never bumped into Vulcan.
        • tabtab 7y ago
          dBASE III and dBASE III+ were different enough that they are generally considered two different "big release" products. I used to automate a lot of grunt work by putting code in dBASE tables. It's real easy to do that. You can make a sophisticated menu system using mostly just tables with code embedded. I was quite productive back then without having to type a lot.
          • teh_klev 7y ago
• alkonaut 7y ago
  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 enterprise hassle to get cleared for anywhere but their own hard drive. This needs to sit above excel but still local. You need the entire business case and business value while it’s still in a local directory.
  • acomjean 7y ago
    Not that I've seen. You figure with file base databases it wouldn't be hard to put something together (sqlite?) Libre office has "base" but its just a front end. My boss uses access, she like the query builder. I've got my mysql instance and some front end tools that do the same, but I'm a developer. Filemaker is another of these applications, but not open source. The thing these stand alone apps have is direct printer access for printing forms and labels. It makes it hard to get off. (Our get off filemaker solution is to download the data from our website and use a stand alone print app to print the labels. One extra step, but its not completely ideal.)
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • tracker1 7y ago
    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.
    • tabtab 7y ago
      OO/LO "Base" is a pile crap in my opinion. People often develop smallish CRUD apps in MS-Access in two weeks or less. It's up and going without fuss and muss and without fiddling with servers, containers, DBA's, etc. You have to admire its nimbleness. Yes, the database "crashes" fairly often, but it's easy to make frequent round-robin-style file-based backups using Windows Scheduler and DOS scripts. Most databases cannot be properly backed up with file-based techniques because of syncing of internal pointers. But MS-Access's separate "lock-file" based technique somehow facilitates file-based backups. Such MS-Access apps are far from perfect, but if you factor in everything, they seem to be a net benefit. I'd probably do a web app myself If follow-on maintainers don't know the web framework used, it can be hard to maintain. Web apps are rarely nimble to do without an involved framework on which the developer is familiar with. MS-Access avoids that problem with ubiquity and a light drag-and-drop learning curve. (It did get harder to learn when they went from coordinate-based to an HTML-esque flow engine around 2006.) Let's face it, desktop GUI IDE's are usually much easier to learn than web stuff. You don't have to deal with the web's lack of state, and CSS/DOM/JS headaches/bugs/inconsistencies.
• mwexler 7y ago
  Anyone want to suggest alternates? What's the "whip it up in a few hours" for "power users" today?
  • hiccuphippo 7y ago
    Google forms + spreadsheet
    • tathougies 7y ago
      Oh come on. Access is way better than both these things. So much easier to work with too.
    • Analemma_ 7y ago
      Access is the "too much for Excel, not enough for an RDBMS" solution. If it's too much for Excel, it's way too much for Google Spreadsheets, which is far behind Excel in functionality.
      • deckar01 7y ago
        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...
        • WorldMaker 7y ago
          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.
          • intended 7y ago
            Yup. Power BI reinforced that impression.
• tsumnia 7y ago
  I will admit a love/hate for Access. Namely, from years of teaching Microsoft Office as Intro to Computing. Access was always the section that was hard to convince students they'd ever need and worse yet outright made the class logistically harder for Mac users. I will say, however, Access has SOME benefit to Information Systems education, especially in a general IS class. These students are marketing, accounting, etc. and so Access offers these students a quick dip into the world of DBs to understand how they operate without requiring they set up a local server or import some complex SQL statement. This is a super niche group though, one that does not warrant much support. If someone were to develop an online Access-themed learning environment that taught those same basics, it would have the exact same benefits without the tangled Office requirement.
  • asdfman123 7y ago
    I wonder how many people became actual programmers due to Access. I feel like MS can't remove it just like you can't remove the second rung of a ladder.
    • DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
      Even if MS feels they can't remove it - the fact they haven't made any significant improvements to it (even those to keep it usable on modern computers) means it will die a slow death and leave people stranded - the same way they did with VB6. For example, the SQL text editor in Access is so broken if you copy and paste tab characters they're displayed as zero-width and break text rendering (if you click+drag to create a text-selection the selection will cover the wrong text) and you usually get a syntax error if you make any changes to the query after pasting it (but if you don't modify it then it's fine). Never mind the lack of syntax-coloring or auto-completion. Microsoft says they are not planning on making any changes to the SQL text editor: https://access.uservoice.com/forums/319956-access-desktop-application/suggestions/10263849-provide-a-better-sql-editor https://access.uservoice.com/forums/319956-access-desktop-ap... There's also a fun bug where the outermost LEFT OUTER JOIN in a query with 2 or more other joins will fail if the right-hand table has zero rows (but will work if the right-hand table has zero matching rows).
• tracker1 7y ago
  While I don't really use Access, I think there's a LOT of power there, even as a basic front end to any other ODBC capable database. And while I'd probably reach for SQLite over Access, there's a lot there to really like. In the end, it's relatively easy to get started with. As TFA mentions, it's really a great option for Power users. A relatively skilled business person can get up to speed with it quickly enough extending from Excel knowledge.
• jtth 7y ago
  If AirTable worked offline it could stage a little incursion into this space.
• sam_lowry_ 7y ago
  Forms over linked tables from MySQL or Oracle are a perfect use case for Access even in 2019. Initial setup is messy but it can be automated for end users.
• SigmundA 7y ago
  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 doubled clicked the MDB. I still think there is a killing to made on a modern day Access "Done Right". DB, Gui framework and printable report generator all in one sharing the same language front to back, top to bottom.
  • Clubber 7y ago
    My first real paying gig was Access 97 (I'm old). They actually taught it at my university at the time in the MIS/CIS path. I built a credentialing system for a small HMO. I was able to get it to support over 100 people, including report load. I split out the database from the front end (forms/reports) and put the database files on an NT4 share. When we grew and it started to buckle under load, I created an additional read-only share and replicated the read-write database to the read-only database every so often. This allowed me to split the users' load between those that needed read/write and those that needed read only. Talk about a rapid design tool of both forms and reports (and schema), Access was tough to beat. I think Corel/WordPerfect had a similar concept as well. Good times.
    • SigmundA 7y ago
      I got started using Access 2, so I'm older...
      • ourmandave 7y ago
        Learned 3NF in an Access 2 class, so I might be older... =)
        • linuxhiker 7y ago
          Dbase3 and Clipper here.
• caseyf7 7y ago
  Let’s not forget those teams still using FileMaker.
  • zaphod420 7y ago
    I really like FileMaker.
• uslic001 7y ago
  I have not used it in over 10 years but it used to be great back in the day when Excel was not enough but more expensive SQL databases were too much.
• deleted 7y ago
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• lsllc 7y ago
  Not forgetting FoxPro and dBase & friends!
  • Roboprog 7y ago
    I think Access is more like Paradox, with code and data bundled together (for better or worse), rather than numerous PRG, DBF and index files that have to be “deployed” together. Yeah, I did a lot of dBase / Clipper back in the mid 80s for rent money while I was in college. Liked the ease of use, but index corruption on a multi user network killed it off. And you have to write code, vs allowing users to accrete stuff on the screen with a GUI.
• wwn_se 7y ago
  If you import excel files to access and connect to a db using odbc you can write sql statements combining both.
• j45 7y ago
  There's little that can replace access in one interface/app. Have hopes for airtable. :)
• jotakami 7y ago
  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/received DB updates a couple times a week. However, just managing our workload and operations efficiently required other data which was not part of this database. I had no choice but to build my own solution, and the only real option was MS Access given the barren IT resources available on a deployed aircraft carrier. But man, was it a fucking lifesaver. Just for one example, we often had to send equipment out to different labs since we didn’t have the capability to test them, and shipping stuff required a standard military shipping document with various mundane pieces of information about the stuff being sent. Creating these documents was a tedious process of looking up the data manually and then typing it into a Word file. I just recreated the document as an Access form, with fields that would populate from a query. Creating the shipping documents went from 30-45 mins to essentially the click of a single button.
  • drblast 7y ago
    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 that we could backup the DB to a shared drive and people after me could modify the thing without being a DBA. The amount of time that database saved really is mind-boggling.
    • mycall 7y ago
      Fun getting everyone to close their MSAccess processes so you can do some changes to the MDB.
      • kwhitefoot 7y ago
• Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  I still use Access from time to time for cleaning up data before importing it into SQL Server. Importing dirty data into Access is so much easier than with SSMS. Once cleaned up, SSMS gladly gobbles up the cleaned data from Access.
• amostil 7y ago
  I used to work as part of a "Shadow IT Group" within a fortune 50 defense contractor. We built fairly complex solutions within MS Office because we were denied the tools to do the job properly. The most complex program I ever wrote in access was controlling electrical arrangements. This database was synchronized nightly across 3 different domains and would routinely have in excess of 50 concurrent users. I think the largest table had around 500,000 rows. The beauty of development in Office is the price tag and the time from concept to implementation. There was very little we could not accomplish with a combination of Access, Excel and sometimes a little wsh.
• viburnum 7y ago
  I learned SQL from the Access 95 manual. That was the start of my programming career. My life would have been completely different without it.
  • bdz 7y ago
    Wish older books like that was more available online
• bradchoate 7y ago
  Would have liked to have read that article, but Medium doesn't want... oh right; "Open Link in Incognito Window". There, I fixed it. Remind me... why are people publishing on Medium again?
• fencepost 7y ago
  Ahem "Hypercard" Is it actually dead yet?
• phkahler 7y ago
  One great thing about Access is the graphical query builder. Not only is it easier than writing SQL, you can use it for learning SQL by changing view from graphical to SQL.
• tiku 7y ago
  With the current "low code" hype in mind, i guess access is exactly that..
• CWuestefeld 7y ago
  Interesting that the pie chart in the article omits Oracle - which was actually the #1 DB in the survey results. Not that I'm a fan of Oracle at all, but it makes me wonder.
  • zzzeek 7y ago
    saw that and it's very glaring. the author should be contacted.
• cyberferret 7y ago
  I cut my teeth on dBase II back in the day, and built my first consulting and development company on the back of that, then moving on to Clipper, FoxPro and Clarion and other tools over time. I always managed to skirt around Access whenever it came up in client meetings ("Oh, we have this FREE database thingy that came with our word processing and spreadsheet tools - why don't you use that to write our stock control app??"). It has been many years since I have seen Access, and I thank the database gods for that. Nowadays I run an HR SaaS company, but just yesterday we landed the biggest contract of our fledgling company with THE biggest manufacturer in the UK of a certain household product. All the excitement was sucked out of me when they asked if they could integrate our cloud HR system with their internal job costing & time sheet database... which is written in Access!
• kabes 7y ago
  I'm convinced that Access could replace 90% of the business/enterprise software being written today in 1/3 of the time. It's especially powerful if you use a connector to a real database and just use access for its forms and reporting capabilities
• thrower123 7y ago
  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.
  • topspin 7y ago
    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.
• elchief 7y ago
  JET should die (or whatever the storage engine is called). But the GUI builder is useful. You can use postgres or whatever as your backend
• jeffdavis 7y ago
  It's hard to beat the ease-of-use of Access for simple data management. I don't see any modern replacement.
• iammyIP 7y ago
  why is microsoft access called microsoft access? because only microsoft has access to it.
• dlphn___xyz 7y ago
  access is probably the easiest tool for prototyping a CRUD app
• 29athrowaway 7y ago
  Try Kexi (Qt, part of Caligra Office, formerly KOffice) and glom (GTK)
• sydney6 7y ago
  Welcome to MS Office, the Operating System in your Operating System. "About 30,000,000 lines of code make up the current version of Office that we are developing."[1] [1]https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/macmojo/2006/11/02/its-all-in-the-numbers/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/macmojo/2006/11/02/its-all-...
• UtahDave 7y ago
  At a previous job an operations analyst built out an Access database because our IT group never got around to helping him build something more robust. It actually worked pretty well. Once we started getting to scaling issues we imported all the tables into MySQL and had Access use the remote tables that existed in MySQL. This worked really well. All the forms and various things were in Access and the tables in MySQL and this scaled out pretty well to many 10s of users. A nice side benefit is that I was able to reuse a lot of that data in an internal web application.
• dwd 7y ago
  I don't get asked about working with Microsoft Access that often, except when it comes to interfacing an online store with a POS or Accounting system. MYOB Retail Manager, which you will find in many bricks & mortar stores as their POS system (often with multiple registers), uses MS Access as its database. Why they never switched to SQLite or MSSQL Lite I don't know but it's there, does the job most of the time (except when it corrupts itself) and there's no value in moving away from it, and going all-out online is a big scary change for them.
• mproud 7y ago
  Minecraft? Does he mean Minesweeper? Minecraft Is very alive and very well.
• raintrees 7y ago
  I, too, still have solutions in use as LOB apps based on Access. I have looked at other tools, being an officionado of Python, I started there. Got sidelined/sidetracked by Django, came back around to plain Python 3. Then I have to pick a GUI, currently playing with QT4, then get the DB connection working, hopefully against MySQL/MariaDB so I can have the solution multi-platformed... And so on. I already have my annual revenue needs met by a service business, this is now all a side-hustle thing, but it has been a slog. I do appreciate QT's visual Designer app, it makes creating forms more like Access/VB.
• somewhereoutth 7y ago
  Reading these comments really brings me back! If I remember correctly, developing a simple project reporting system based on Access, and using forms, was my first foray into professional software development (I had actually trained as a Mech. Eng.) - a career that took me from sleepy Surrey, in the UK, all the way to Silicon Valley! One thing that sticks in my mind is tab ordering of input fields - the difference from an occasional user to those who would use a system heavily every day.
• filmgirlcw 7y ago
  When I was 14 or 15, my dad paid me to do work for him over the summer. He was in real estate and wanted to have a file/database entry for each of the floorplans and properties he was selling or building. Because I was so young, I used Access to create a CRUD app of sorts that kept details on all his projects. He used it for years. It’s embarrassing for me to admit how long it took me to make the connections between what I did in Access (and later FileMaker) and MySQL and other database systems. When I look back, I’m half-annoyed with myself for not just using a better SQL tool, but I’m equally pleased/impressed with what I built as a kid. Airtable is probably the closest we have to “modern” Access - but I agree with the other comments that point out the value and potential of these types of tools.
  • froindt 7y ago
    Young experiences are how you learn, and make a lasting impression! In high school I tinkered with computers a lot. I setup SMB shares, ftp servers, created basic websites, some basic query work. I developed a pretty solid mental model of how "computer systems" work and talk together. Now that I'm in industry, I'm one of the people building these "shadow IT" solutions. I can clearly see how those late nights paid off. I also act as a liason between the business and IT at times, and can help bridge the communication gaps.
• treve 7y ago
  It feels like th true replacement for Access right now is Excel/Google sheets. Not nearly as versatile, but it serves the same audience. I wish we had a good general purpose widely available Access replacement that's just a level above spreadsheets
• louis8799 7y ago
  Coming from a banking background, I know that Access is heavily used in the financial industry, including Investment Banks.
  • heelix 7y ago
    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.
    • IgniteTheSun 7y ago
      This has to be my favorite story on this topic today. Triumph and tragedy in the same instance - tragedy that the person mentioned didn't learn how to use Access properly and triumph in that the person overcame, adapted, and innovated to find a solution. The second sentence of your post contains both joy and heartache and - in my opinion - could stand alone as a short story for the tech crowd almost on par with the record holder for shortest short story ever. These are some of the golden nuggets that I used to read Slashdot for 15 years ago and now find on HN.
• MR4D 7y ago
  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).
• hermitdev 7y ago
  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.
• euske 7y ago
  The three characteristics in OP reminds me of PHP. 1) It was aimed at people who aren't that much of a programmer, 2) it made them feel empowered, and 3) it just works in a relatively simple setup. (I'm posting only because I thought that someone must have mentioned this for sure, but couldn't find one.)
• qwerty456127 7y ago
  Someone should make a modern thing. With SQLite for the files and Python for the code.
• Ace__ 7y ago
  Hello. I made my MVP v2 in Access. Currently testing it and getting it checked out by a few founders, then I will release it, for free. Well, almost free, email collection. It took me 10 months, which is fast considering the Excel version (MVP v1) took me 4 years, but then the Excel version has the whole concept from beginning to end, and there was a lot to learn, still a lot to learn really. The Access version covers only the first 9 steps. What I made was a startup system that guides founders from idea to early traction. Access was not my first choice. I thought after the Excel version that I would use either a no or low code solution, a RAD tool, or some sort of visual development thing. As you have guessed I am not a programmer. I did dabble in BASIC, well a bit more than dabble, when my dad got me a Speccy. I enjoyed it, there is beauty in logic no matter how Phaedrus cuts it, but it was a means to an end really. From Draw and Beep through to Deluxe Paint 3 and OctaMed, it was about expression. I am not saying programming isn't a form of expression, but it is the long way round to me. A few years later, I had to learn some Turbo Pascal, in order to make a database I think, talking 24 years ago, so I can't actually remember. But I do remember being bored out of my mind. So, I quit my computing degree. It was strange, I had an Amiga I could make things on. My college had just got some multi-media computers, yet in university, we had these stiff monochrome 486's. They didn't sing, didn't dance, looked awful but they did go a long way. Sheesh Kitkat. Second time round at university many years later, I had to face programming again, this time it was Java, JavaScript and Object Orientated Delphi. OOD I liked, the other two I tolerated, for it was just a programming module rather than the whole thing. After I had finished the Excel version, obtained feedback, tweaked and modified this and that, it was onto MVP v2. I looked at a shed-load of stuff, Bubble, Kexi, Lazarus, My Visual Database, Delphi 10.3, App Builder, Zoho Creator, Cross UI, Airtable, to name but a few. There were issues with all of them: 1. Not enough control and/or functions 2. Cumbersome and tedious to do anything 3. A sense of detachment as if I was having an OBE 4. Database; I don't care about connections, stacks and what-not, just sit in the background, and save stuff. 5. Process, and output what I tell you to do, and send outputs so they are inputs in other places 6. Questionable documentation 7. Customer support non existent, unresponsive or just prone to sending me back to the documentation I checked before hand 8. Tutorials and lessons showing how to make clones of well-known startups, or rudimentary apps 9. Holding me and anybody I share it with over a barrel 10. Unnecessarily complicated So anyway, I decided fudge it, let me take a look at Access, it's been sat there for years. Many other people have it, although not Mac users. I am not a complete novice when it comes to Access, I know a little about 1,2 and 3 step normalisation, although I didn't strictly stick to it. Yeah I had to learn a bit of SQL and VBA, and any questions I had were already answered countless times on forums, although usage and disagreement of ! and . was annoying. I was obviously unable to make what I really wanted, but I was able to make something close enough for what I deemed as necessary at this moment in time, in order to at least give a user a taste of what I propose. The minimum part of the MVP had to cut across the board, like a slice of cake, bit of everything. I got asked a few times why am I using or used Access. I could have mentioned the above list, but the crux of it was, to me it was the tool for the job, with a support network around it, with very few chains and shackles, at a stretch I could do it on my own. I couldn't give a hoot about stacks, dependencies, libraries, etc. The latest languages, scalability, etc, whats that to do with an MVP? I am proud of what I made. I won't be pulling out my who gives a toss but me violin in a public forum, but it's a tough lonely slog. It was my idea, and I had to use what I could to bring it to some sort of fruition. A small stepping stone in the right direction. Cheers, Ace.
• hnruss 7y ago
  My first job was to finish building a website that used MS Access as the database. I only learned years later how bad of an idea that was. Guess that’s what you get when you hire a programmer for minimum wage.
• egdod 7y ago
  > 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.
  • TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Not really. The Blogger/Blogspot UI is a special case of steaming garbage. It's a heavy-weight, bloated webapp whose primary task is to display a few kilobytes of static text on the screen. I think they should be used as a case study of what can go wrong within a team for a blog engine to look like that.
• tyingq 7y ago
  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.
• senderista 7y ago
  When I was consulting I probably got a call to recover a corrupted Access database at least once a week.
• sqldba 7y ago
  What’s weird is that they don’t address those issues and improve or replace it. There’s nothing in the easy database/UI space at the moment and it has gone unfilled for a long time.
• leeman2016 7y ago
  I find MS Access not as intuitive as the other siblings though. Wish there was a "You Suck at Access" video like this one [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c]
• MarcScott 7y ago
  I used to teach students MS Access, as well as the entire Office Suite. At the time I questioned the validity of teaching them to use Access, as I was pretty sure that it was little more than a toy program, and would never be used in the wild by proper businesses. Then at a mate's wedding one of the guests turned out to be a database admin at a large financial institution. I mentioned my opinions on teaching Access to students, and how pointless it was, and he laughed at me. His response was that he'd often be asked to build a database to do xyz by management, and his reply would normally be something along the lines of... "Sure, we can get a secure database, that talks to the other systems and does everything you need, with a web interface in a week or so." Management would give him disapproving stares. "Or I could knock you up an Access database in a couple of hours that'll do the job." Management's response - "Yeah, just do that."
• sgt 7y ago
  Is there a mirror of Medium articles? I am stuck at the paywall for this one.
• rym_ 7y ago
  I was once (or maybe still am) one of these power users. Started out with writing VBA macro's in excel to automate some work, probably created some monstrosities in excel. Then migrated over to MS Access and eventually taught myself proper (MS-)SQL which I have been developing in for over 9 years. One of my crutches is exactly that, that SQL is more or less the only language I have mastered and when I while I feel like I am skilled enough to develop complex databases, I am always lost at creating a proper frontend for end-users. Quite often I will resort to MS Access as a light frontend (holding no data and minimal coding), just a bunch of forms. Does anyone know an alternative to this? If I just want some forms but don't want to dive into web-based applications, what alternatives to access exist?
  • endymi0n 7y ago
    Airtable is widely lauded at being a modern, web-based version of Access. Haven‘t tried myself, but it‘s looking promising.
    • rym_ 7y ago
      I was checking it out just now but I feel quite happy with the SQL-Server side of things, I am basically looking for a more modern way to present forms to the user to interact with my database, without having to learn C#/VB.Net or web dev. Or maybe that's just what I need to do to move away from MS Access as a frontend.
  • MayeulC 7y ago
    If you don't need it to be on the web, Python + Sqlite isn't too bad. Then a GUI like pyqt could do the trick (with UI designed in Qt designer). It still requires some coding, though. If you need it to be on the web, php + Mysql is probably one of the easiest to learn. The cool kids might have moved to something else, like node or django, though. It also requires learning done basic HTML, but the complexity is reasonable.
    • rym_ 7y ago
      I've dabbled a bit in Python here and there and indeed I feel this is most likely the route I will take, before web (as this is not a requirement for me as of now).
• catchmeifyoucan 7y ago
  Would you all consider Airtable an Access replacement?
• Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
  > a special crowd that’s rarely targeted these days: technical people who aren’t serious coders Flash had a bit of this too, especially in the ActionScript 1 days - albeit from a design rather than a business background. So too did every 8-bit micro that booted into an adequate BASIC. It’s a shame that we’ve largely lost this.
• teekert 7y ago
  Our project's central database atm is an Excel sheet that different people interact with in different ways, Manually, Using macros and using Python (openpyxl and Pandas). It works well. Would Access be a step up?
• askvictor 7y ago
  I've just been teaching some basics of DB to high school students; wanting to introduce the concepts of tables, forms, reports and queries, but without need to know too much technical stuff, administration etc. Access should have been perfect (I hadn't used it previously, but have programmed, used and administered a number of 'real' DB systems), but it just didn't make sense to me. I'm sure I could have learned it, but the workflow just wasn't obvious. As well as being ugly as hell. So I went looking for alternatives, and they're thin on the ground. Went with Zoho Creator in the end, but even some of the concepts in that aren't intuitive (it treats forms and tables as the same thing). Having done quite a few things with anvil.works in recent times as a 'modern Delphi' I'm left wondering when the 'modern Access' will arrive.
• maslam 7y ago
  Here's a little known fact - the Jet storage engine behind Access is alive and well. It's used by Active Directory and many other products at Microsoft. At my previous company, we built a distributed key-value store on top of it (much like using sqlite in a distributed manner).
• Lio 7y ago
  This reminds me of a job I had back in the mysts of time (...or more likely around 2003ish). I was brought into a project where a seniour data scientist was working with MS Access but was runing out of room as it, at the time, had a database size limit of 1Gb on disk and our data set was about 2.5Gb in size. We could have ported the whole thing to SQLite3, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL or even Oracle as we had site wide licences available. Nope. MS Access was the favourite tool of this guy so in MS Access the data had to stay and I had to write code to juggle data between multiple simulataniously connect databases on a single machine. This taught me a lot about how scienitst and accademics approach software engineering. My boss was both brilliant and really dum at the same time. He just wanted to get from A-to-B as "simply" as possible. He wasn't interested maintainablitly or assethics. To this day the whole business still brings me out in a cold sweat of cognative disonance because on some level I know he may have had a point but on the other hand... I STILL have the flatspot that work gave me on my forehead from all the pointless wall banging involved. I still beleive his work saved the company involved millions if not billions over years since it was presented. (...and I have never accepted another contract involving VBA or other Microsoft technologies since.)
• miki123211 7y ago
  In polish high schools, Access is still a part of the computer science curriculum (for those who take CS). It doesn't have to be Access specifically, but it is in 99% of cases. You can't really avoid it, as it's required on the Matura exam. I've heard rumors that some teachers even teach the point and click interface instead of SQL.
  • m1k1 7y ago
    I even had point and click access on "information technology" course on the life sciences faculy on of the biggest polish university ~7 years ago
  • froindt 7y ago
    To be fair, if you're gonna be in access, their SQL query writing interface is a steaming pile of issues. In my experience: 1) You can't do multi-line queries. After executing, it'll smash it all to one line again. 2) You can't add comments. After executing, it'll delete them out. 3) It doesn't do any syntax highlighting. ---- Years ago I worked for a company who had tons of manufacturing production data. Someone built an interface to query the data - used by just a couple people. Mind you, this isn't Access, it was homebrew software. Eventually word spread about the data you could access, and dozens to hundreds of people got access. They never got to the top of the priority list to make it multi-user, separate profiles, create permissions on queries, etc. There was a mandatory 8 hour training session with a test before getting access to the environment. Dev queries were automatically deleted 90 days since last run. On prod, 365 days. This was to reduce clutter. Query names were terse. You had to know people who knew what queries did. Comments were used sparingly. Anyone could edit and view any query available. I copied a query, made edits, then executed. Got weird results. It took 1.5 days to figure out the parser was messed up! First, line comments using ' were excluded. Next block comments using /* */ were excluded. However, if a macro was called inside a block comment, it was executed. That was the most frustrating bug I've ever debugged. Literally I'd copy the query, it'd run successfull, I'd comment out a couple returned values, and it'd fall on it's face because of how macros worked.
• jalla 7y ago
  Any database system that has a 'Repair' function is a liability. Access should be taught as a primer at schools and universities on what not to use. It's the BASIC of databases - considered harmful.
  • kabes 7y ago
    Then again, you can use a connector to connect it to MSSQl, MySQl, Oracle and others. And you still have a very powerful tool for reporting, forms, queries etc.
    • jalla 7y ago
      Still, the database engine was/is a liability as long as the locking policy and the transaction support messed up your data. As a one-user only system it was fine, however people developed critical, multi-user business systems with this toy engine. It allowed uneducated cowboys to develop systems fast that failed horribly.
• kqvamxurcagg 7y ago
  I work for a small finance firm. Before I joined everything was maintained ad-hoc in spreadsheets with no defined structure or consistency. I developed an Access database that now acts as our data warehouse and reporting engine. We are talking here about tens of thousands of rows of data not millions. Access has forms that allow non-technical users easy access. SQL queries can run more complicated reports. Excel can also easily import Access queries and tables. Programmers often don't understand that Excel and Access are valuable because you don't need a programmer, simply a professional with some technical knowledge. Developing a fully-fledged solution would slow you down and increase your developer headcount by 1. If any modifications need to be made you could waiting weeks for an IT/Developer team to react. IT often acts as a blocker for us trying to get work done with limited data sets. There is nothing else quite like Access on the market. Air table is but a toy for those of us in business that need a serious tool that can integrate with Excel and has aggregate and SQL querying capabilities.
• buboard 7y ago
  Why would it die. Most of the internet is a rehash of MS access.
• camexp 7y ago
  I'm still working on a replacement for a still-in-use a2k distributed database front-end (moved the data to mysql a few years back), it's taking forever, it's a huge project I spent over ten years on, and now another ten year trying to replace it.
• jmkni 7y ago
  My first proper dev job was in a call center. When I started, they used Microsoft Access almost exclusively. They would put an MDB file on a shared network drive and every agent would open it to input caller data via the forms. Maybe 100 people with the same MDB open. Mental. No backups, lots of (data) corruption!
• paultopia 7y ago
  Of course Access isn't dead. It's a: - widely known - sold by a major and trusted (wisely or unwisely) enterprise company database - that was once shipped directly to essentially every end-user on earth when it was bundled with office, and with - an actual GUI designed more or less by people who know how to design GUIs. who on earth would ever have thought that it would die, in the absence of any replacement with similar properties?!
• zafiro17 7y ago
  I'll put in a vote on behalf of access. I work in a consulting industry and as part of my work I have to track thousands of companies, individuals, tenders, and projects. It became obvious early on that a nice little DB would simplify the work. MS Access was there for me, already installed as part of the minimal software set they make available to us. Months later I offloaded the data to a Postgresql database (elephantsql.com) and continued using Access as a front end using the postgresql ODBC component. It's been perfect, and because all my data is offsite, it goes when I go. I have yet to find a better solution that Access as a front end to a postgresql database hosted elsewhere. To the person who suggested sqllite, I'd respond I'm reasonably technical but have no idea how to do that, so it's no solution to my problem. I used filemaker for a while on Apple. Linux has no GUI database front ends worth the while - Libreoffice Base is a weak substitute for Access. Kexi doesn't work as simply a front end. Excel isn't a database and we spend a lot of time laughing at people who use Excel when a DB is the proper tool. Any SAAS solution is out of the question; having a server dedicated to my/our use at work is out of the question. What's left is Access. Long may it live!
• AngeloAnolin 7y ago
  I think at some point, anyone who used a MS-based operating system at work may have indirectly stumbled upon MS Access. No matter how better other tools can be nowadays, there's no denying the fact that there are businesses who still have smaller MS Access apps that runs critical business processes. I have helped a small company (~9-10 years ago) who had an MS-Access based application where the source code was locked as well as the database. Took a while to unlock both the source and the database and up until today, that application is being utilized fully in their operations.
• glxybstr 7y ago
  >Clearly, there are people still interested in Access, even if it’s only because they’re trying to untangle the mess left for them by a previous generation of hobbyist programmer. My job function entails extending and maintaining an MS Access database that our small company still uses as its primary tool for data entry and reporting. It started on Access 97, moving up through a few new releases until about 2010, which we stayed on until just this year. It's now working with the O365 edition. It was first developed by someone with no previous experience, referencing a copy of Access 97 for Dummies. I learned on the job just by poking around - which is now, I think, the biggest pain point for how we use the software: how exposed everything is. Prior to this role, our company would contract out for development: we'd come up with a big list of things we want, and it would be done and deployed within a couple week's time, although it usually took many revisions to get right. Now that I am able to do this development work in-house, things go much more smoothly as I also work with the day-to-day processes the tool is used for, and I have a grasp on how systems operate within our office. It's very important to have database tools with a low barrier to entry, so I think there would always be some market for this; where it really shines is its straightforward reporting and form editing capabilities, along with its user-friendly query designer. Being able to generate complex datasets without having to think about SQL (though still being able to write SQL!) is powerful. (as an aside, I feel that I'm ready to move on from my role, but my abilities with Access don't seem exactly desirable or hireable, and as the article describes, there's always a looming threat of it going away someday. I was given a title of "Database Administrator" from higher-ups who think of Access as some esoteric ability, although gambits for pay raise so far have been fruitless. I see it more like ability in using Excel. I have some experience with MySQL via personal projects and programming in PHP, but I wouldn't call myself a dba if I'm being honest with myself. I feel a little stuck by not having the abilities to match my job title when searching for new positions, and if I'm going to the trouble of getting a new job, I don't want a lateral move with the same compensation. The wise thing to do would be to learn competence in proper database tools. I'm young, without a degree, and any advice would be welcome)
  • alexhutcheson 7y ago
    If you want to learn to do similar work (CRUD apps that talk to a DB) in "real" languages, then I would recommend learning Ruby on Rails[1] or Django[2]. The overall concepts should be really familiar, because they're similar to the workflow you'd use in Access, but you'll learn web development and a marketable programming language along the way. You'll probably also pick up details about how to structure a database that would be useful for your work in Access. Of the two, I think Rails is easier to get started with, but Python is probably more marketable. If you want to do a deep-dive into Computer Science and transition to a full-time software role, then you might want to look into Lambda School[3]. I don't have personal experience with them, but several people I trust claim their results are excellent. [1] https://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html https://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html [2] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/intro/tutorial01/ https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/intro/tutorial01/ [3] https://lambdaschool.com/courses/full-stack-web-development https://lambdaschool.com/courses/full-stack-web-development
• phaedrus 7y ago
  I think Microsoft Access has a lot in common with Javascript. Both are Lovecraftian horrors that no sane person would (clean-sheet) design in their current form. Both derive their ubiquity from having been the only or nearly the only option in their domain. Javascript being the only way to write web-native programs and already there in the browser, and Access being the only database available to users without admin rights on their computers and already there in the Microsoft Office suite. Both are tragedies of opportunity cost for the history of computing by pre-empting or delaying the emergence of any replacement built on superior technical foundations.
• vaporland 7y ago
  Years ago an acquaintance was running a MICROS POS for his restaurant, and lamented the heavy tax burden the local government levied on him. I was able to create an external software application (we called it "CookBooks") that would selectively skim off cash transactions (ignoring credit card transactions) from the Access database. This allowed him to reduce his tax liability and pocket a substantial amount of cash on a nightly basis. This was in 2002 and I recall that it took no time at all to gain update access to the underlying proprietary Access database powering the MICROS system.
• antb123 7y ago
  Django admin + sqlite?