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Comment by oehpr | Hacker News Reader

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I found what Airtable is doing to be deeply attractive. But their costs and their lock in and their pricing model and it's just...

UGH.

Microsoft Access was a good idea with a terrible implementation.

There HAS to be a unfilled niche here.

nocodb looks to be the best answer so far? Because it ties to a backend postgres database, it can be used along side bespoke applications. It still needs development though. I'm watching it like a hawk.

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We are trying to answer this with CloudTables (https://cloudtables.com) - which is effectively a GUI for my DataTables library with a Postgres backend. Current work is to address the row limit and allow millions of rows without needing to contact "sales" (me), while also not charging per user (I hate that as a customer). If anyone fancies giving it a go and dropping me some feedback that would be most welcome! There are some rough edges without question that are still being worked on, but I think it has some advantages such as being able to self host with your own Postgres instance.

I just want to say thanks for DataTables - it's a fantastic library!

This is off-topic, but I wanted to say a big Thank you for DataTables. I used it on many a project and still rave about how fully functional it is.

Access was pretty incredible for what it is/was. I could build a structured database with a nice UI for non-data people, reports, and even more advanced things like automated emails, exports, etc., in 1/10th or even 1/20th the time it'd take to build something similar as a web app.

We had an Access database that managed grant funding for an entire public University and in many ways it worked a lot better than the SaaS app that recently replaced it. Need to collect a new set of data? No problem, give me 4 hours and it'll be ready to use :P.

I'd love to have something like Access but that worked very well as a platform-agnostic web app and could easily integrate with cloud infrastructure.

You used to be able to do that with Access 2010 web databases. Of course, Microsoft has deprecated that in favor of Powerapps and Microsoft Dataverse, but it's not clear that actually lets you join an Access database to a low-code frontend. (It should, but there's a lot of marketing speak that I don't quite understand.)

Access wasn’t even that bad of an implementation. It was amazing not just how broadly access was used but the kinds of users who could do real things with it. A bit like HyperCard.

VC-funded SaaS wiped out any real possibility of a sane business model for a product in this space.

Access lacks, IMO, better internal programming and more exposure to the fact that you can use pretty much any database you can access (pun intended) with ODBC or ADO.

Make it easily deliverable over network, and you have killer product.

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