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Ask HN: Access alternatives?
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?
- icey 17y agoI'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.
- davidw 17y agoOpenOffice has something similar, I think.
- ilovecheese 17y ago> 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 17y agoWill Excel (or some other free spreadsheet) not suffice here?
- nixme 17y agoI've heard good things about Bento, but she'll need a Mac :) http://www.filemaker.com/products/bento/features.html http://www.filemaker.com/products/bento/features.html
- runjake 17y agoJust 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 17y agoI'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 17y agoFrom 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 17y agoThe 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.