Background
I work for a large organization which has thousands of MS Access applications floating around. I didn’t write any of these – in fact, most of the original authors have long since left the company – but from time to time another Access app lands on my desk for support. I would soooo love to replace access with a different solution.
Requirement
I know that there are several good alternatives for the database part of MS Access (the Jet database), such as SQLite, MySQL, VistaDB, etc.
What I would like to know is: Is there anything that will replace the front end part of MS Access?
I.e. Something which can be used to build forms, write simple scripts and queries, etc?
Why?
@BracC asked "why replace access?" – A fair question indeed.
I want to get rid of access because:
- it hides logic, leading to hard-to-support applications. Logic can be in lots of different places, none of which provide or encourage any structure:
- macros
- modules
- queries
- forms
- its very nature encourages users to create "little" applications which become "not so little applications". Then the user leaves and I have to support a bunch of spaghetti. I know that access isn’t the only culprit, but it’s the leader in my organisation, and I would love to get rid of it completely.
For extra credit
what I would really love to find is something which can read in an MDB file and output something like C# which replicates the functionality. (Or any language – not fussy).
I hope this is all clear. If not, please post a comment and I’ll re-write/add detail.
Update
@GuinnessFan makes some points I find interesting. I have added my comments to discuss those points.
What we have done since I asked the question:
- Got users to give us a definitive list of access applications they use and need. (The understanding is that any MDB files not on the list can be deleted – hooray!).
- Analysed the MDBs on the list, coming to the following conclusions:
- Most of the "applications" consist of a single hard-coded query or a single linked table.
- Many are a small number of queries with, perhaps, a date parameter or similar.
- very few (if any) have any truly complex logic.
- We are now working through the list, converting most of the apps to SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) packages.
- Anything which can’t be replicated using SSRS will become a hand-crafted web application. However, there aren’t many of these.
May I say many thanks, to everybody who has given me helpful answers.
You could check out Oracle’s Application Express. It’s free and it’s geared toward Access developers.
It has a migration assistant as well that you run your Access database through, it proccesses the data and the forms, migrates everything to an Oracle Database (this works with the free database, Oracle XE, and comes install by default) and builds web forms for your Access database.
So in the end you’ll have your Access databases on the web, your data in Oracle and somewhat nice web front end for extending them.
As far as Oracle goes, the tool isn’t half bad. You can sign up for a free instance to play around with here.
Here’s the document that explains how you migrate Access Databases.