Hacker News Reader

Comment by segfaultbuserr | Hacker News Reader

This is the question I always wanted to ask, I almost wrote an Ask HN...

Who use Microsoft Access in 2019?!

An obvious case is creating a glorified/enhanced Excel for some specific office tasks, another case is that some applications use ".mdb" backend.

But that's all? edit: What I'm interested in is cases of using Access for something other than a specific Excel-like office task - it seems Access is still used for some serious business in many businesses (pun not intended).

Also, if your office does use Access just for Excel-like tasks, but has overused it so much, please comment as well, I'd like to hear your story.

Who use Microsoft Access in 2019?

View on HN

I'll bite: We use MS Access as a thick client for a PostgreSQL database. I appreciate it for is reporting, forms, productive scripting language, and query designer.

What I don't like about it is that Microsoft hasn't really improved it in the last six years - but there isn't anything remotely like it: Xojo, FileMaker,and AirTable are close but not quite there. For us AirTable is a non-starter because you rent it as a service.

If I had someone hold a gun to my head and jump to alternative - it would probably be Lazarus/Borland Delphi

An acquaintance of mine is an accountant. He uses it when his spreadsheets get too big/busy/complex. He's not "technical", but he is quite intelligent and is very familiar with Excel, has even written a few VB macros here and there. It's perfect for him. I assume the thousands of people just like him are the answer to your question.

Thanks for the story. I can imagine that, as I said

> creating a glorified Excel for some specific office tasks

What I'm interested in is cases of using Access for something other than a specific office task - it seems Access is still used for some serious business in many businesses (pun not intended).

Well, my point is that I think it's entirely possible that the only real use for MS Access is as a glorified Excel spreadsheet. That seems like a fine use case with a pretty significant market share! When you get right down to it, that's all most small businesses that use "real" relational databases do with them, either.

Good point.

My first job out of school was fixing someone's bright idea of writing a few dozen ecommerce websites with Access as a data store. They stored the CC# so it could be run later as a card not present purchase. It was nightmare fuel, this was in ~2006.

U.S. based brick and mortar casinos use a lot of older tech and at many of them, Access is still a vital component. One I contracted with recently had sort-of a data warehouse (a SQL Server db primarily consumed by Tableau reports) but the daily ETL process to move data from the CMS (casino management system) into the warehouse was 100% Access. Via macros, temporary tables and views, some individuals believe Access can be an effective ETL script writer. In reality it crashed regularly and when it did complete, best case scenario was it took 3-4 hours. A rewrite in Python reduced that to 12 minutes, with far fewer errors and additional computations along the way. Besides ETLs, Access is also popular in generating mail files -- a casino may send hundreds of thousands of physical mail pieces each month, the address and offer data is often passed to the printers via CSV which was generated by an Access macro. The industry has numerous well-paid people with "Database" in their job title, whose sole experience is with Access, and couldn't write a single line of SQL.

Access also makes for a decent CRUD admin interface for any ODBC database, SQL or otherwise.

Bingo. It shines as a UI over linked tables.

Guilty. I have an AccessDB right now that reads from 3 different management systems to create tasking for a small office and about 450 external independent contractors. The first system is via a web scrape because the API costs too much. The second system is via a SOAP API and the third system is based in MariaDB. It reads data from each system and restructures it for tasking then analyzes and reports on the performance of the completed tasks. It also sends out nagging emails for tasks that are lagging behind and does a million other little things. To say it is a mission critical application is an understatement.

I have been a "developer" or should I say, I used to be a developer since the COBOL/DB2 days. I have used a vast array of systems and languages over the years but I have always had a love for the simplicity and power behind Office. But, the times they are a changing. Right now I am learning Go with the intention of marrying it with VueJS so I can at least pretend to be somewhat current.

The only use case I've seen is a charity using it to manage their donors as a crm.

Warehousing/Distribution industry without budgets for proper ERPs or inventory management.

Why would anyone use Access in 2019 when they can use SQLite instead? Is it because Access has a graphical interface?

Exactly. And a nice programming language. The engine doesn’t really matter. You could create something like Access on top of SQLite.

You can make a nice UI very fast. Forms, fields, buttons. It's nothing like SQLLite which is just an SQL engine.

This is like saying "why would anyone use dropbox when you can just run rsync on your Arch linux box."

To me the main feature of both Access and SQLite has always been the fact they're single files. Very easy to manage.

Because the vast majority of Access users have it installed locally on their PC already as part of Office, and have never heard of SQLite. And even if SQLite was installed, you'd also need a different program altogether to actually view or input any data. Access includes the engine, the GUI, the query tools, the form builder in a single program.

This is like saying why would anyone use a Toyota RAV4 when they can get a 400+ hp LS3 crate engine from Chevy. Is it because of the quality of the dashboard plastics?

I really like this analogy. The question you were responding to has been asked - in one form or another - so many times on this thread that its clear that those developing software and business tools are completely out of touch with users and power users of those tools.

I mean, the crate engine is cheaper, lighter, far more powerful, and you can buy one labeled "turnkey"!

Access is both a database engine and an UI and forms builder. You can easily design a database and make queries in the UI, and you can create custom forms to the extent that is doesn't look like a database anymore but just a custom desktop application. You can do that without any programming.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com