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You don't have to be so bashful
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
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Access fills a very specific niche that is right in between "too big for Excel" and "too small for SQL Express".
The problem is that this window is very narrow, and after just a small amount of growth, it suddenly makes sense to migrate again to proper SQL. In my(admittedly limited) experience it was almost always better to just skip Access.
I wish there was something in between but based on SQLite.
Honestly, projects like AppSmith and Baserow are pretty good at this. Google AppSheet is by far the best implementation of this style of low-to-no-code app builders, but comes with the obvious caveat of being a Google product.
If someone managed to make an open-source solution as slick as Google’s, I’d be right on it. As it stands, all the competition that I’ve found requires a decent existing knowledge of SQL queries to run the widgets themselves.
The problem with using google instead of open source is that one day your shit suddenly has ads or ceases to exist.
I just did some digging and Grist actually seems to do most of what I need it to. There may be hope yet! It’s still not quite as slick as AppSheet, but may be a step in the right direction.
Search for "low-code app frameworks", there are a whole bunch, they fill the same niche now that Access once did (though these tend to be cloud based, not local sqlite). Baserow is a great open-source example.
Access is one of those programs that was a game changer in its day. Desktop databases became popular in the 80's for orgs that either couldn't afford or didn't need a mainframe.
All the other competing desktop database systems were slow to transition from MS-DOS to Windows and Access offered quite a few features that the others didn't have. Microsoft included Access with Office 95 and every office version thereafter. That pretty much wiped out the rest of the competition.
Access has just outlived it's usefulness. Better solutions exist now. Microsoft seems aware of that since they've done basically nothing to it since 2016. They're probably just keeping it around for the enterprise customers who are too stubborn to migrate off it yet.