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These types of projects always remind me of MS Access. Access is forms on a database, and really easy to use. It obviously has its drawbacks but nothing has come close to it. I've never understood why MS didn't capitalise on it by extending and improving it.

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Because the single-system paradigm doesn't work any more. However, modern replacements do exist, Airtable is one of the first; it's basically the notion of a "spreadsheet with more structure", and then building forms and such on top of that. I've recently been playing with Grist and like it, although it is rough around the edges.

https://www.getgrist.com

I love Grist, and relevant to this discussion, it now has forms: https://www.getgrist.com/forms/

Grist is open source, Python scriptable and each project is stored in a SQLite database.

Airtable also has a surprisingly small hard row limit. 50k rows is very easy to hit quickly.

If you want Airtable, but with unlimited rows in the DB, that's Visual DB: https://visualdb.com You can use query parameters to specify which subset of records to bring to the frontend.

I'd love a modern non-SaaS MS Access equivalent, that just use files: https://stephango.com/file-over-app

I never saw an Access database that didn't become a regretful mess after a couple of years - the person that made it left, no-one knew how to update it. Fancy validation built into the form that just got in the way when requirements changed.

Thus I came to the conclusion that any Access database is probably better off being a spreadsheet, even with all the chaos that not having forms as a front end and not having relational structure entails. At least people can understand other peoples spreadsheets (up to a point)

Most Access-based apps turn to shit because they're made by non-developers. The tool itself isn't to blame. I've seen Access used to great success when coupled with scripting to dump schema and code to text files for version control and code review.

Right, but if you're a developer you might as well use something more developery. Like the selling point of Access was supposed to be that non-coders could use it to knock together a database.

In the late 90s I built some quite big things in Access and promptly regretted it. I guess Access got used for those projects because the organisation already 'owned' it as part of the Office bundle whereas Visual Studio 6 was seen as 'expensive' (I think it was about £500 per developer or something).

But these days that problem would not occur. The days of development tools needing comparatively expensive licences are over.

> I guess Access got used for those projects because the organisation already 'owned' it...

> The days of development tools needing comparatively expensive licences are over.

That's exactly the motivation I saw for Access being used in the past. I agree, those days are over and that justification for using Access is moot.

I'm unfortunately forced to use access at work. I never wanted to learn what is, unless MS do something, a dead technology, I fully agree that most access databases are a shit show but only because nondevelopers (as mentioned but others). However, kept simple, on point and used within it's limitations, it's a very flexible system.

I don't know, it's something I've wanted many times.

Recently I discovered https://directus.io/ which comes pretty close and it's open source.

I miss acccess too. Good old days

It is still available.

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