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I know this is not about MS Access perse, but I still feel there is a void concerning decent MS Access FOSS alternatives. MS Access hit a certain sweetspot betw

I know this is not about MS Access perse, but I still feel there is a void concerning decent MS Access FOSS alternatives. MS Access hit a certain sweetspot between functionality and ease of use that I haven't seen anywhere since. Retool or Airtable are always named as viable alternatives. But they're not imho. I have built many MS Access applications and they always were surprisingly resilient. I believe even to this day there is a MS Access database GUI application running somewhere I built 15 years ago. Standalone, not connected to the web or anything. Just plowing away, just a single self contained file (mind the Office dlls etc.), backup and recovery is as easy as copying the complete file over to anywhere else and you're good. I think I have tried every alternative out there, but none hit that sweetspot (they always lack something).

bb88 4y ago
It's sometimes surprising that the simpler the solution the more effective. Cloud based can be very convoluted as a solution as it has to solve all the corner cases. And then you have to worry if the cloud provider will drop your data or let you export it easily for backup -- which they may or may not let you do easily.
sseagull 4y ago
I worked at a large non-tech (well, kinda tech) company as a chemist. They used an Access DB as a Lab Information Management System. Basically, a way to log samples in, assign work, report results, bill hours, etc. It worked pretty well! I believe it was home grown, but eventually expertise in it left and they were looking to move onto something else, which IMO was probably a mistake - it may have been easier to just fix the bugs and not try a difficult migration.