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I feel the same way. In the 90s you'd find small businesses (and some larger ones!) built entirely on a single Access database on a network share. At the curr

by jewel 12y ago

I feel the same way. In the 90s you'd find small businesses (and some larger ones!) built entirely on a single Access database on a network share. At the current small business where I work, we use google sheets instead, and it leaves a lot to be desired. For the past few years an easy-to-use database interface for small businesses has been my primary idea of what I'd like to build if I founded a startup.

rpwilcox 12y ago
QuickBase(.com) may be something close to what you want: while mostly aimed at > 10 people businesses. It's not great, but it does have a reasonable amount of power... especially for apps with say less than 10 tables. DabbleDB was a good one for individual users, until Twitter bought it and shut it down. Google says grovesite.com is a competitor... and I also think Dabble's founders were debating rewriting it. There's always the old FileMaker Pro, or databases of that age / time. (4D??)
- jasoncrawford 12y ago
  @jewel, @kikidrew, @rpwilcox: We're building this: https://fieldbookapp.com https://fieldbookapp.com. We're still in private beta, but message me (jason@fieldbookapp.com) and I can get you an invite.
maskedunit 12y ago
i still work at a business that is built around access and am desperately looking to move away into something html5 but as easy to use. it's insane that no one has done something that just replaces access on the web. you should definitely try to give it a go.
kiwidrew 12y ago
Agree 100%. In the span of a decade or so, the goalposts for what a "small business app" have moved dramatically: multiuser by default, offline editing/sync, usable on mobile devices, modern-looking UI/UX... but the Access-like tools never made the leap. They're still stuck in the ancient past, and effectively unusable now. Why hasn't anyone been able to build a modern equivalent to Access yet? Google Sheets is laughably primitive when you try to use it as a multiuser database. It's impossible to validate input and preserve structure (giving a user edit permission, so they can insert new data, also allows them to remove cell validation and destroy the structure of the spreadsheet). Something as simple as copy-and-paste (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V) will destroy all of your carefully placed conditional formatting and validation constraints. And sometimes a formula will just "break" for no reason at all, only to start working again a few days later... I'm honestly surprised that this is what we consider to be the start of the art. Where's my easy-to-use cloud database?

by jewel 12y ago

rpwilcox 12y ago

QuickBase(.com) may be something close to what you want: while mostly aimed at > 10 people businesses. It's not great, but it does have a reasonable amount of power... especially for apps with say less than 10 tables. DabbleDB was a good one for individual users, until Twitter bought it and shut it down. Google says grovesite.com is a competitor... and I also think Dabble's founders were debating rewriting it. There's always the old FileMaker Pro, or databases of that age / time. (4D??)

jasoncrawford 12y ago
@jewel, @kikidrew, @rpwilcox: We're building this: https://fieldbookapp.com https://fieldbookapp.com. We're still in private beta, but message me (jason@fieldbookapp.com) and I can get you an invite.

maskedunit 12y ago

i still work at a business that is built around access and am desperately looking to move away into something html5 but as easy to use. it's insane that no one has done something that just replaces access on the web. you should definitely try to give it a go.

kiwidrew 12y ago

Agree 100%. In the span of a decade or so, the goalposts for what a "small business app" have moved dramatically: multiuser by default, offline editing/sync, usable on mobile devices, modern-looking UI/UX... but the Access-like tools never made the leap. They're still stuck in the ancient past, and effectively unusable now. Why hasn't anyone been able to build a modern equivalent to Access yet? Google Sheets is laughably primitive when you try to use it as a multiuser database. It's impossible to validate input and preserve structure (giving a user edit permission, so they can insert new data, also allows them to remove cell validation and destroy the structure of the spreadsheet). Something as simple as copy-and-paste (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V) will destroy all of your carefully placed conditional formatting and validation constraints. And sometimes a formula will just "break" for no reason at all, only to start working again a few days later... I'm honestly surprised that this is what we consider to be the start of the art. Where's my easy-to-use cloud database?