

Ask HN: Access alternatives? - mcantor

A friend of mine is computer savvy, but not a developer.  She helps run a nonprofit organization with a bi-monthly gathering; it has an entry charge that is cheaper for members of the organization.  She wants a way to keep track of attendance, memberships, renewals, and so forth, for the eventual purpose of doing some basic trend analysis.<p>When she said she was thinking of using Access, I cringed and reflexively barked, "ACCESS IS EVIL!"  Wisely discarding my knee-jerk evangelism, she asked me for alternatives.  After Googling around for a while, I didn't really find anything that seemed like it would fill the same niche for her.<p>The web developer in me is thinking, "She just needs a dead simple CRUD app, like rails on top of a simple sqlite scehma."  But, that's probably outside the scope of her computer skills to set up.  Is there actually something out there that I can suggest to her without implicitly obliging myself to weeks or months of here-and-there tech support?
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runjake
Just have her use Access and keep your evangelism to yourself, cripes!

Are you seriously thinking a CRUD RoR app might be a better solution for her?

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david927
From what you've described, she just needs Excel, but if it's more complex
than it looks, Access is actually a fine alternative.

I do think you're right, though, that there is a place for a competitor to
Access. My startup intends to compete in that space.

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jasonlbaptiste
I'm kind of amazed no one has knocked it out of the park with a web version of
Access. Blist kinda tried, but they seemed to have gotten too bloated as a
startup. Wasn't there a YC company working on something like this?

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nixme
I've heard good things about Bento, but she'll need a Mac :)
<http://www.filemaker.com/products/bento/features.html>

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turtle4
The closest competitor to Access is FileMaker Pro.

But I don't see anything wrong with her using either excel or Access for the
type of thing you are talking about. No need to overcomplicate.

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icey
I'd say Access or DabbleDB would be the right way to go. If she already knows
how to use Access then it's a no-brainer.

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csbrooks
Will Excel (or some other free spreadsheet) not suffice here?

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davidw
OpenOffice has something similar, I think.

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mcantor
I heard about that, but, is it actually any better than MS Access, or is it
just an alternative for an alternative's sake? I'll have to keep Googling...

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hellotoby
Well, it's a _free_ alternative which is the main differentiator here.

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ilovecheese
> She just needs a dead simple CRUD app, like rails on top of a simple sqlite
> scehma

No she doesn't. She needs Access because her needs are exactly what it's
designed for.

