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I have been looking on SO and can't seem to find something more recent than around 2008.

I am looking for an alternative to Microsoft Access with similar capabilities. I.e:

  • Forms
  • Macros
  • Reports
  • Etc

In another question VS Lightswitch was recommended (Still in Beta 2). I had a look at it, although it seems good it is still reasonably new and unsuported at this stage.

My main purpose is to have a DB that is simple, portable and can be accessed easily (mostly by 1 person at a time, but also sometimes by multiple people). I know Access can provide this and if it seems to be the best solution I might stick with it, but are there anything else out there that someone has found useful for custom data capture, filtering and creating reports?

I know that Visual Studio or alike can be used, but would prefer something more in line with Access.

The link to similar questions are (but seem to be somewhat old):

Front-End for MS Access migration?

Replacing MS Access forms

Alternatives to Access

Good Free Alternative To MS Access

Community
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GrimR7529
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4 Answers4

7

People are usually looking for Alternative to MS Access either because:

  1. They, for some reasons, consider that Microsoft is Evil
  2. They don't want to pay for the extra Access licensing

For people from Group 1,I do not have that much to say. I was part of it till I realised how fast and simple it was to use some of these great software (not all ...) sold for a very fair price. Up to now, I have spared years of headache using them. Thanks Microsoft, I owe you one.

For people from group 2, there is a runtime\free version of Access that you can deploy (for free, I insist) on your final user's computers. It means that you do not have to buy any basic office software for your users but you still can have your users running an Access App on their machines ...

Philippe Grondier
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  • So I get that the runtime version will allow your users to be able to run forms, reports, etc. Given this option, is there an alternate way that the *developer* can build those forms, reports, etc without having to purchase the full MS Access suite? – RyanKDalton Aug 09 '11 at 18:05
  • Well no! You have to buy at least one MS-Office pack with MS-Access. But it is not that expensive ... think about it: it costs less than 1 day of software development and you get a complete tool for that! – Philippe Grondier Aug 11 '11 at 06:14
  • Fair enough statement. I guess springing for the cost of a single license *is* a fairly inexpensive route to go distributing a database/forms application to a wide audience. – RyanKDalton Aug 11 '11 at 15:44
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One of the reasons people are looking for this is because Access 2013 is quite different than previous versions and it looks like it will soon be the end of the road for this product. The problem with Kexi and Base as well as the other office clone versions is that they are very weak in their support for scripting. With MS VBA many things can be accomplished which are not available in these (as yet). Access has a built in IDE for developing VBA and it is almost the full visual basic 6 IDE with nice a debugger etc. The only product I have found thus far which have something like this usually have a much higher price tag than access. (Alpha 5)

mvddf
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2

Try OpenOffice.org. It has the Base program, which is similar to Access. It is also free and open source.

Biosci3c
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You can Consider Kaxi ( http://kexi-project.org/ ) , as it a database component of KDE-office.

GeoObserver
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