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Microsoft seems hell-bent on deprecating the swiss-army-knife of database tools. What else comes close for facading/file-swapping/cloning/name-your-acronym-connecting arbitrary database servers/spreadsheets/CSV's/flatfiles?

What weird kinds of functionality have you squeezed out of Access? And what else is there to take its place?

dkretz
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    I really appreciate Access's ability to quickly import text data. I often will use access to prepare data for importing into a MS SQL database – Andrew Harry Nov 29 '08 at 06:17
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    "What will we do after Access?" One word: Celebrate. – nickf Dec 02 '08 at 16:03
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    You hate Access because you want to con users into paying for high-level development for simple projects. Reminds me of a Monty Python skit where they hunt for mosquitos with a bazooka. – JeffO Feb 19 '09 at 02:48
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    Rather, the clients hate Access when they have to call the consultant to compact and repair the database every week because they asked for a system to support 50 users and the "consultant" gave them an Access "application". :) – HardCode Feb 19 '09 at 04:03
  • I'm guessing the system started with 5 users and then 50 wanted to use it, but they didn't want to pay for an upgrade to SQL Server. – JeffO Mar 24 '09 at 14:48
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    @Guiness: Of course! That's exactly what happens, but, to continue your analogy, they weren't hunting mosquitos anymore either. – matt eisenberg Jul 06 '09 at 13:04
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    Access development is not restricted to those that can pay high sums for software and licensing. This allows morons to create absolute garbage with a great tool. I doubt anybody who is critical of Access has used a well designed Access application. – ryan a Jan 07 '10 at 15:09
  • Until the OS ships with a database engine, that can operate on a self contained database file, that users can copy/paste backup, and requires no tools to install, there will be a market for Access/Paradox. – Ian Boyd Jan 27 '10 at 14:21
  • @Ian Boyd: Windows has been shipping with just such a database engine starting with Windows 2000. It's called Jet 4.0. But that's hardly the question, as Access is not a database engine, but an application development tool, and that's not something the OS *should* be providing. It's also something for which there are almost no comparable products (FileMaker is about the only one, and it doesn't use SQL (though it can access SQL data sources) and has a very limited scripting language). – David-W-Fenton Jan 29 '10 at 19:36
  • @David: You are right, but le dorfier, in his question, seemed to be referring to the database engine qualities of Access. – Ian Boyd Jan 29 '10 at 23:27
  • @Ian Boyd: if the question is entirely data-oriented, then your response makes even less sense, since Jet 4.0 does the job and ships in every version of Windows from 2000 on. – David-W-Fenton Jan 30 '10 at 17:25
  • @David: Which begs the OP's question, "What will we do after Access?" – Ian Boyd Jan 30 '10 at 17:52
  • @Ian Boyd: Neither the OP nor I introduced the issue about a db engine shipping with the OS -- that was introduced by you. My comments here are not addressing the question but your comment. The original question itself is kind of crazy, since to me, it's like asking "what will we do after Windows?" I've watched a lot of Star Trek and given all the computer failures and security breaches that happen there, I can tell you with confidence that Windows will still be running our starships in the 25th century. – David-W-Fenton Jan 31 '10 at 19:27
  • @David: "connecting arbitrary database servers/spreadsheets/CSV's/flatfiles" is done by Jet. And the question was what will we do "to take its place?" – Ian Boyd Feb 01 '10 at 02:30
  • @Ian Boyd: the question says "What will we do after Access?" not "What will we do after Jet/ACE". – David-W-Fenton Feb 02 '10 at 22:43
  • @David. Again. Read the question, not just the title. Focus especially on the 2nd sentence. i'll quote it again for you, "*What else comes close for facading/file-swapping/cloning/name-your-acronym-**connecting arbitrary database servers/spreadsheets/CSV's/flatfiles**?*" – Ian Boyd Feb 03 '10 at 00:37
  • @Ian Boyd: so, you would agree that the question is unclear. – David-W-Fenton Feb 04 '10 at 00:38
  • @David W Fenton: i suppse we can mutually let it go :) – Ian Boyd Feb 04 '10 at 02:22
  • From what I've read, Microsoft does not plan on "deprecating" Access. If a developer wishes to move away from Access, he or she certainly can. I imagine, though, that Access will be here for many, many years to come. – Bobort Sep 26 '11 at 19:54
  • The end of Access is closer than you think. There will be no more Desktop Office, Access included, by year 2025. Only a universal online Office version will be available. Access Web Apps was supposed to be there, but it was discontinued shortly after its release and PowerApps is its replacement. – Joe R. Feb 28 '21 at 16:48

21 Answers21

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Access is not a DBMS. Or at least it's not just a simple DBMS. It's a very good RAD environment, a simple way to create SQL code graphically, and a regular front-end to fully fledged DBMs.

Neither SQL Server (Express or MSDE) nor Oracle, MySQL, etc. will ever replace it, until they come integrated with a simple programming language, a Crystal Reports like facility and a way for beginners to get around without having to learn SQL.

At my first professional job I developed a very big system completely in Access. Front end for the clients, admin front for me, reports and monitoring for management, permissions per user, automatic tasks run at certain times, etc. I came to learn a lot of its flaws and strengths as a result.

I've seen marvelous apps done with it, as well as pieces of crap. I still use it for personal projects, and ain't' ashamed of it (for instance, a Sudoku player, or a Karnaugh mapping implementation). There's an MVP who's created a Paint clone completely in Access, though I believe that's extreme.

Access' pearls: It's nice to easily test a database design idea and have sketch forms, reports, etc. created for you. If you change a column's name (or even a table, though that fails sometimes) it's nice to see all references to that have changed to the new name, automatically. The "sub-form" control rocks, I longed for it on VB6. And the "Thunder" button to do repeated filtering on tables is great, I wish I had something like that on SSMS!

Joe Pineda
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    +1, Access and Excel for that sake is heavily underestimated by "professionals", the power of these tools can of course be abused but used correctly they can be unbeatable. – terjetyl Mar 10 '09 at 00:04
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    "Power" is a very ambiguous word, and most can't see the two dimensions it encompasses. (1) You can do _anything_, as in C or assembler. (2) You can to _almost everything_ you need, _very easily_. I think most devs miss the second interpretation... – JeffK Oct 20 '09 at 01:38
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    Where's the paint clone? I'd be very interested in seeing how that was done... – Nitrodist May 07 '10 at 19:02
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    Could you write Access in Access? – Ritch Melton Mar 11 '11 at 04:43
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    Large chunks of Access are actually written in Access -- many of the wizards, in particular. The Access Developers Handbook 97 supplied the source code MDBs for some of the A97 wizards, in fact. – David-W-Fenton Mar 12 '11 at 00:53
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    @Nitrodist I once wrote a 3D renderer in Excel+VBA, when I was bored in high school. It made all the rows and columns very small, then set the background colours. – user253751 Dec 20 '14 at 09:26
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The problem with replacing Access - and replacing Access is the problem which stops me in the vast majority of cases recommending a move to Ubuntu or SUSE desktop to my business clients - is not that Access is widely used for its database facilities: it's not except with the most Micky Mouse of user-written departmental applications which are relatively trivial to re-code. The problem is the medium sized applications where the data was migrated long ago to the corporate SQL Server.

These are a nightmare. They're often badly written (I've acquired a fair few to administer over the years) and encapsulate reams of business logic. Recoding them in anything is generally quoted at a couple of man-months at the best - usually twice or three times that, and it's unusual for a department of the size these are found in to have the budget to support that. Moreover although the arrival of AJAX and good desktop-like controls has meant that this is at least now possible in theory, in practice these are of then massively integrated with the rest of the MS Office desktop and virtually impossible to disentangle with out users seeing a drop in usability in the short to medium term - which is a show stopper in itself.

I really do not know what the solution is, apart from the slow replacement of creating new systems with other methods and hoping for the gradual demise of existing apps. Trouble is I think Access could well be the Cobol of the 1990s - it'll be around for ever supporting legacy apps because it's too costly to rewrite from scratch.

As an aside, does anyone else coming from a non-Access traditional Win32 coding background have the experience of finding that the standard of coding in even professionally written Access apps is generally below average? Although superficial (but important) stuff like formatting and variable names are generally fine I find over and over again that program structuring is poor. I know that this may often be because these apps have grown like Topsy, and VBA really isn't conducive to good coding anyway, but even allowing for these factors things generally seem worse than one might expect.

Cruachan
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    Can't say I've ever seen a well written Access application or a good/valid use of them where it couldn't be better handled and/or cheaper to build a web app. – Justin Yost Dec 07 '08 at 08:00
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    Then you've not seen much in the way of complex Access applications. To be sure you're typical departmental written Access app can be moved to the web easy-osy, but it's not uncommon to find more strategic apps with hundred of forms/reports and 10K lines of code plus. – Cruachan Dec 15 '08 at 11:18
  • I think the reason probably is that a fair portion of the better developers would have written the app in Real Visual Basic (VB2 to VB6) and primarily used Access for the database (maybe with some querydefs and reports.) – dkretz Jan 10 '09 at 17:32
  • Access is below avg in general because a good programmer would do it in a different way. – Nat Feb 19 '09 at 07:02
  • Well theoretically. Trouble is one often ends up using Access because the app in question has grown from a smaller inhouse Access app and a complete rewrite to VB or WebApp is hard to justify in cost terms – Cruachan Feb 19 '09 at 09:32
  • The single time I created something in access was for an app that would only be used during a four week period and I had < 2 weeks to build ... it served it purpose perfectly :) – eglasius Mar 28 '09 at 06:42
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    @Cruachan I don't agree with the "professionally written" comment, not because I can say anything about third parties access apps, but because I find over and over again lots of third party apps poorly written in different platforms/languages. There are few really "professionally written" apps. – eglasius Mar 28 '09 at 06:47
  • @Freddy - I would agree that there is a great many poorly coded apps out there in all languages, however it seems to me, purely from personal experience that Access suffers disproportionately. For example I recently picked up an ap that had been written for a client by an 'award winning' software.. – Cruachan Mar 28 '09 at 18:51
  • company which had since gone out of business. The code was appalling, to the extent that the programmer had been looping over data by opening a query for boolField==true, retrieving the first record, updating it to false, closing the query and requerying to get the next record. – Cruachan Mar 28 '09 at 18:54
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    Access doesn't cause bad programming. Bad programmers cause bad programming. – Ryan Lundy Aug 06 '09 at 13:40
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    AHA! Thats the answer of the year. No tool is a bad tool - just the "TOOL" that mishandled the tool. This can apply to Access and the OTHER most COMMONLY trash talked app I can think of - FRONTPAGE. You can't blame the tool for the abomination you create. – ryan a Jan 07 '10 at 15:13
  • Access allows non programmers business experts to put some very complex business logic into a computer database. That is a blessing...and a nightmare for the expert that is called afterwards to turn that into a maintainable application. – iDevlop Feb 13 '11 at 20:33
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I think the easy answer is nothing... Access is commonly used because it is the only option and it is extensible. There is simply nothing else out there that is installed on nearly every business machine in the world as access is. If you are looking for an alternative, Oracle Application Express is a fairly powerful web based app that can be run on Oracle XE. It is a potential alternative to Access but does not support Master-Detail tables as well as access.

jle
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There is a continuum of developers in the world, rather than hard and fast boundaries. People range from business managers and IT professionals. I consider myself to be an advanced amateur developer, somewhere between the two. As such I use MS Access at work to organise a large amount of data in a small architectural office including timesheets, financials and architectural specifications. Sure, the application now is a mass of stinking p** that has grown over almost five years.

I've been searching for something better than Access for ages- I can create simple apps in VB.NET however the learning curve is huge from VBA. I've looked at all sorts of options. Often you need Crystal Reports to get any kind of reporting capability, or the IDE is non-intuitive, or linking a field to a data object takes ten minutes each time, or there is not integration with other office products at all. The boss is not going to pay for something that costs a bomb, either. I'd love to get away from Access, but nothing I've looked at gets anywhere near ticking all the boxes.

jford
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the nice thing about Access is its answer to large IT bloat. It comes with MS office so its already approved for use on locked down computers but I don't have to attempt to struggle for weeks/months to get an application approved through various departments, coding hours to account for, and all the testing for an application i can whip up in an afternoon with Access. Sure SQL server would be nice to use, but not worth the headache.

Anthony
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    +1 It is sometimes forgotten that by the time permission is got for some other set-up, the need for the set-up is gone. – Fionnuala Dec 13 '09 at 10:03
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    As someone who has developed quite a few Access DBs I can say that avoiding corporate IT is a huge factor. I can recall at one company we wanted to migrate an Access DB to SQL server. The database was already split so all we had to do was move the tables up to an already existing server and repoint the front end to the SQL Database. For no work other than creating an empty database and one dbo user. (All the development work would still be done by our department.) IT wanted to charge our budget 10K. That was the end of that idea. – Oorang Jan 24 '10 at 06:59
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My cousin is a serious FileMaker guy. He seems to be doing great and has grown a small firm around it. Apparently FileMaker is a cross-platform Mac/PC system for rapid app development...

Maybe something like that will rise up with the business power-user/RAD set?

Microsoft may have a history of intentionally killing off database systems like this. I listened to a .Net Rocks interview one time with Les Pinter, where he claimed that he once heard a top Microsoft exec say that every copy of FoxPro that sells costs Microsoft thousands in lost SQL royalties. And where is FoxPro today? Officially, it is was end-of-lifed in March of 2007. So how did it get from prominance to demise? Well, Les says that Microsoft acquired it and ran it into the ground on purpose.

I am not usually big on conspiracy theories, but this does resonate with Microsoft's track record from that era.

Anyway, trivia aside, I believe there will be more RAD-style database tools... They empower non-developers and allow developers to solve certain types of problems very quickly. I have an aversion to using them for large projects that, unfortunately, cascades - small projects tend to grow over time. So as a result I only use them for the very tinest things.

As for the long term consequences... Well, I have seen scenarios where they didn't scale well and all those fragmented solutions started to look a lot like technical debt. It is actually possible to hook Access up to a SQL Server back-end, which solves a lot of problems.

Probably the biggest/weirdest thing I did with Access was writing an EDI system from scratch. For those of you who have worked first-hand with EDI, you know what I'm talking about. What a silly idea that was. My problems here had more to do with VBA than Access though -- I remember just really needing interfaces and not having them.

I also used it for code generation back before things like Codesmith were available. It generated business objects (CRUD and some other basics) for ASP Classic. That actually worked awesome.

Brian MacKay
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  • FileMaker is great; unfortunately when you grow beyond its limits you get in a similar mess as access (a little less because the lack of VBA) – Javier Nov 30 '08 at 04:48
  • Here's a scary thought -- big news -- Macy's Thanksgiving day Parade switches from Access to Filemaker -- http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/05/29.5.shtml – dkretz Nov 30 '08 at 05:01
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    FileMaker does not support SQL. Enough said? – David-W-Fenton Dec 01 '08 at 22:53
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    I've done things in Access that take to long and are too unnecessarily complicated in other environments. There are so many Excel files out there being used to manage/store data - hate on that for awhile. – JeffO Feb 19 '09 at 02:55
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I don't think MS has any intention whatsoever of getting rid of Access. They may transform it into more of an end-user tool than a programmer's tool, but it is never going away. The forking of the Jet database engine into the traditional Jet 4 version that ships with every copy of Windows (because Active Directory uses Jet 4 as its data store) and the version that is owned by the Access development group (the ACE, with its ACCDB file format, which is, de facto, Jet 4.5 or maybe Jet 5).

Access is a hugely popular and useful application and functions in a whole host of levels within any number of organizations, large and small.

Why is there no open-source alternative to Access?

Because it's way too hard to create such a complex piece of software that does so many different things well.

David-W-Fenton
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  • "Active Directory uses Jet 4" -- wrong. "JET Blue was originally developed by Microsoft as a prospective upgrade for the JET Red database engine in Microsoft Access, but was never used in this role. Instead, it went on to be used by Exchange Server, Active Directory..." from wikipedia. – onedaywhen Dec 03 '08 at 11:40
  • Explain to me, then, why Jet 4 is included in every version of Windows since Windows 2000 (the version that introduced AD). I don't know where you got the quote, but it is a fact that Active Directory uses Jet 4 as its data store, and that's why Jet 4 is maintained by the Windows development team. – David-W-Fenton Dec 05 '08 at 03:25
  • I did some more research on this. It's not clear what role Jet 4 plays, but MSJET40.DLL is there in Win2K and every version since, part of the OS. It may be that it's used to manipulate the Jet Blue ISAM, since Jet Blue provides no SQL interface. But that's just speculation. – David-W-Fenton Dec 08 '08 at 00:45
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    "ESE was formerly known as Joint Engine Technology (JET) Blue, and so frequently the term "JET Blue" or "JET" is used interchangeably with the term ESE outside this documentation. However, there are in fact two completely separate implementations of the JET API, called JET Blue and JET Red. The term "JET" is frequently also used to refer to JET Red, which is the database engine that is used with Microsoft Office Access. The two JET implementations are completely different, are separately maintained, have a vastly different feature set, and are not interchangeable." – onedaywhen Jul 06 '09 at 12:59
  • Above quote comes from MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684493(EXCHG.10).aspx) and I think makes it very clear that Jet Blue does not use Jet Red's DLLs. – onedaywhen Jul 06 '09 at 13:00
  • This is an old, old topic. I tried to investigate it way back when it was originally a *new* topic. There is no clear statement on MS's part about why Jet is included with all copies of Windows. The Active Directory explanation made sense except for the fact that AD doesn't use the same version of Jet that is in MSJET40.DLL. – David-W-Fenton Jul 07 '09 at 01:58
  • Yes, an old question to which someone posted an answer yesterday so it appeared once more in my RSS reader. The answer to your question is that MS have programs dependent on Jet Red: this was confirmed to me at Microsoft but wouldn't citing NDA (though I suspect they may have long forgotten!)... – onedaywhen Jul 07 '09 at 08:42
  • One possible lead: leave the showplan.out registry switch on and monitor execution plans involving your unfamiliar tables and possibly your Windows logon. I spotted something this way last week, though I suspect it was SharePoint ACE. – onedaywhen Jul 07 '09 at 08:45
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I doubt Microsoft will kill off Access. With Access 2007's integration with Sharepoint and the rapid growth of SharePoint, Access may in fact have a resurgence as an off-line and reporting tool for SharePoint web sites.

Chris Latta
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    This Sharepoint comment was posted almost a year ago, but the sentiment expressed there has been born out now that the beta of Access 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 is out. Access integration with Sharepoint has been vastly expanded, and Sharepoint 2010 with Access Services can now publish apps written using the new Web forms/reports to be used in a web browser, with no loss of functionality in comparison to running the app client-side, directly in Access. This is huge. And there have been tons of investments in the ACE database engine as well. Access is going to be around for a long time. – David-W-Fenton Jan 28 '10 at 04:45
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in my experience Excel is even more widely used inside corps. We're just now doing a project where we convert ~ 60 000 Excel documents (with 4-12 sheets in each) to Sharepoint and Infopath forms. ;)

noocyte
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    People hate on Access, but Excel? Talk about an abused tool. There are reports created for Sr. management to make major business decisions on this stuff. – JeffO Feb 19 '09 at 03:06
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Microsoft would like us to move to using Office Business Applications - essentially hooking up the office apps to databases. Add SharePoint into the mix and there is a lot of possibility. Also plenty of licencing fees for MS as well.

I have seen access used to integrate and front end GIS and health data. It blew me away how well this app was coded and documented.

Nat
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I don't think that Access is going away anytime soon. The beta of office 2010 is out with an updated Access included and the Microsoft blogs are hyping the features of Access 14 (the version after 2010) which include improved Access Projects (.ADPs) with better support for SQL Server 2005/2008 and better .Net integration.

If i were to look for a new integrated database development system providing front and backend features Oracle APEX would be the main contender. Front ends are web based requiring no runtime on the client, the whole system is free to download and instal (express edition) and given a few years the entrance barrier for new users hopefully will be reduced so it is something laymen can dabble in.

1

As Mark. Access was my first approach of database and I found it powerful at the time. It has some nice features like generating SQL from "query by example". Its form features and capability to print on various format (sheet of labels for example) was nice too.

On the downside, it is proprietary, and each new version was incompatible with the previous one: if you load a base made with Access 97 with Access 2000, you can no longer load it with the older one...

Although I don't do much personal database works (list of addresses, mostly), for such work I would use either Open Office's database tool (not tried yet) or a good old open source database (MySQL, SQLite come to mind as lightweight bases) with a GUI front end, for example, SQuirreL SQL Client, and probably JasperReport as report front end.
Not as integrated as Access and with steeper learning curve, but somehow more flexible.

Now, I am sure we can find some simple good old non-relational database for the simplistic uses I had at the time. :-)

PhiLho
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    After Access 2000 they did a good job of backwards compatibility. I have tons of Access 2000 apps running fine on Access 2003 and 2007. – DJ. Nov 30 '08 at 18:47
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I welcome the day when Access breathes it last breath and joins the likes of Clippy.

Access is well-intentioned, but it has become a crutch. Even in large companies with able IT staffs, Access applications can run rampant, providing a pain point for knowing the global landscape when it comes to products to maintain. Linked Access databases that point at other datasources, unmaintained Access applications, and just shear flexibility are issues, in my opinion.

I think that Access is actually too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible for its own good. In Microsoft's well-intentioned attempt to bring rapid development to the desktop database realm, it really has opened a Pandora's box. Look at it from another perspective, too. Assume that a company has a few applications that are written in Access. The developer who wrote them leaves. These applications are just important enough that they still need to be used, but not important enough that IT gets the approval to port them to a more technologically capable platform.

Now, the situation is that if no one on the team knows Access, it is requirement for the new developer. This means that you might have to pass on a developer who is the most technically well-rounded and the best fit if he does not have legacy chops. I speak from experience, on this. We are down to two legacy Access applications, and are trying feverishly to convince of the needs to either incorporate the functionality into related, code-based projects or into new projects of their own. I have one developer with Access "chops", and am not going to base a candidate search on whether someone knows Access or not in the event that he leaves.

Joseph Ferris
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    IT departments that can't manage their Access users are badly run and if they provided services that filled the needs that Access satisfies, there'd be no need for Access. In short, your argument is against bad management, not against Access at all. – David-W-Fenton Dec 01 '08 at 22:52
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    No. The argument is about bad choices made on all levels in the pass. It has nothing to do with managing users, but maintaining legacy applications that never are prioritized by business owners to be worked on. The argument is against Access and still valid. – Joseph Ferris Dec 02 '08 at 10:35
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    Access gets used because the so called development teams want to go mosquito hunting with a bazooka. Business user's needs are in constant flux and some application need to be develped quickly. If you can do it in .NET or Java then fine, just don't take so long and make excuses along the way. – JeffO Feb 19 '09 at 03:00
  • In my experience Access gets used because someone on the data team wants to create a one-off tool and it never makes it into the hands of the developers - not until it is time to maintain it after that person is gone, that is. – Joseph Ferris Feb 21 '09 at 14:21
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    I'd rather see an application developed in Access for a project that will probably get scraped instead of spending a lot of time & money to develop a full-blown application that no one uses. – JeffO Mar 24 '09 at 14:52
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    To each his own. I have been bitten by Access enough to know to avoid it. The argument was never about applications that weren't used. That is a problem outside of the scope of this. We'll just agree to disagree - but there will be no new Access in my shop, ever. :-) – Joseph Ferris Mar 24 '09 at 20:34
  • "too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible"...that is NOT the point. The horror story starts with very basic things, like a table copied into another table by a Make Table query just to change a few details, and then updated by an update query, and then..... – iDevlop Feb 13 '11 at 20:41
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Access definitely has both pro's and cons, it's just another tool to use but not abuse. Every adult job I've ever had used ran on windows, so Access or something like it will exist. I feel sorry for the places that are stuck in Access quicksand or lost in excel hell. But are we forgetting that all that can be corrected and better yet prevented with a bad ass bi team and proper training.

King Conch
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Access is just migrating to more of either a single user on a desktop or a few users on a shared database file without much security. If you want to take it to a slightly higher level, use Access as a frontend to SQL Server.

Well now it seems Access 2010 is looking to get the hooks into SharePoint in an attempt to "web enable" the Access application. There are even host sites catering to this technology. Maybe all those who were concerned Access couldn't scale can fear no more?

JeffO
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As far as the weirdest thing I've seen squeezed into Access...

I am a police dispatcher for a smaller university, and we (like almost every agency) use a CAD (computer aided dispatch) and RMS (record management system) system.

Our previous CAD/RMS software was built ENTIRELY into Access. You opened Access, and through an ugly GUI, entered calls for service, everything. Officers wrote reports through the same interface.

It worked great at first, and then as the database size grew, it became extremely slow and difficult to use. This is what happens when the state makes you go with the lowest bidder on a project...

Now we use a CAD/RMS solution that is browser-based, backed by MS SQL.

Jared Harley
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PostgreSQL, MySQL, FileMaker, <insert name of database that is not Access here>, Excel, custom parsers, natural language importers, Perl just because it is a swiss army knife, grep awk sed, m4, the old versions of Access before the demise of Access, ...

weird functionality? Rather than the normal myriad of ways to access Access, I use SQL statements to access Access. The SQL statements that I use work with other databases as well as Access -- weird I know.

Mark Stock
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    Access is not a database. It is a database application development platform that happens to ship with a default database engine, Jet. Comparing Access to mere datagbases makes no sense. The only piece of software that belongs in your list is FileMaker. – David-W-Fenton Dec 01 '08 at 22:50
  • To add to David's comment, Access doesn't even have to use its own database engine. I've used it to write FoxPro and SQL Server applications and I see no reason why it couldn't talk to MySQL as well. – Jonathan Allen Dec 07 '08 at 09:12
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Like many, I have used and abused access over the years, always felt a little dirty though ... I felt a little better about it when I came across this post by Rob Conery recently:

http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/hacking-your-vote/

Would never have dreamed of using access in a voting system. Scary.

seanb
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    The jet .mdb file was used and not Access itself. Maybe they should have found a way to prevent users from getting to the file itself. It is just bad security. Give users rights to a sql database file and see what happens. – JeffO Feb 19 '09 at 02:57
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FileMaker is a good database for shifting from MS Access. It is a cross-platform database (mac/PC). It has a Web Viewer, through which you can connect to the web world. For example, charts, maps etc can be shown in this web viewer. FileMaker is easy to use for beginners. You could also explore the scripting mechanism and achieve data manipulation. The latest FileMaker 10 has several new interesting features. My vote is for FileMaker.

Srividya Sharma
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I believe File Maker Pro will probably become a new standard if people ever figure out it exists.

FMP has all of same features / short comings of Access plus you can actually make a real client / server setup if you know what you're doing.

In a single file you can define your forms, reports, tables, etc. It is also cross platform and runs on Windows or Mac, and can be adapted to web based too. All by design.

Coming from the "real" SQL servers to File Maker Pro was really hard mentally but once I got the hang of it I found it was pretty amazing. Now as a database it's nothing special but as a database application development system that "normal" people can use it really shines.

If you PLAN on a network setup I would suggest taking the time to learn how to separate the storage database from the application database up front. Otherwise upgrades require you do lots of data export / import and that can take a while or be almost impossible if your tables change significantly.

I've built a call center application that automatically handled incoming phone number lookup and automatically dialed regular POTS phones using FMP on NT. That was about 6 years ago so I imagine it's improved since then.

Great Turtle
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    Does FM do SQL? That is, can you populate forms/reports using SQL statements? As long as it lacks that (and last I checked, it did), it's of no use for real developers, seems to me. – David-W-Fenton Jul 08 '09 at 02:02
  • File Maker Pro 9 and up can connect natively to MSSQL, MySQL and Oracle. It lets you drag and drop controls to create forms and reports with little knowledge of what you're really doing. "Real" developers probably won't like it too much but I would say it's comparable to access in that regard. Plus it runs on Mac and Windows. – Great Turtle Jul 08 '09 at 03:50
  • @David W. Fenton: Jet Blue doesn't have a SQL gateway but it is preferred over Jet Red (which does) by developers of some high profile systems. – onedaywhen Jul 08 '09 at 05:39
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I've only used Access when I wished Excel could do a "Left Inner Join". Otherwise a MS has done a fair job making there C#/SQL offering simple (and free) to use for light weight RDB projects.

Jamie
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