Help - OpenSource DB Wanted

I am a skilled Access developer and a local charity has asked me to develop an application to enter People and Stories (and then link People to People and Stories to People, etc, etc, etc).

Doing this in Access is a piece of cake. BUT...... they can't afford any DB or App software.

Are there any OpenSource or free equivilents to MS Access. Basically I want the DB, QBE and Form stuff that I get in Access.

Any suggestions, or am I expecting too much from free software????

Thanks in advance

You are SO unbelievably lucky that the forums went down when they did.... you almost had a pile of flaming armageddon dropped on your head, but I couldn't post it because of the outage.

Let me just say this: I believe the problem is that "free software" is expecting too much of YOU, not the other way around. Frankly, if you can't develop a database driven application without Access's pretty "click the widget" game, maybe you shouldn't be trying to develop them. Access is a terrible platform for anything other than an end-user front-end and prototype development anyway - I learned this through harsh experience.

I suggest you check out these 3 databases, all of which absolutely blow Access out of the water in terms of stability, functionality, and performance, and even whip Oracle and Sql Server in some circumstances:

PostgreSql
MySql
Firebird

One other thing: In the future, before you generalize about things you clearly don't understand, I would STRONGLY suggest that you put a little bit of effort into research first. That sort of thing helps innoculate you against the dreaded "foot in mouth" syndrome you are suffering from now.

Yowza, ctb. I wonder what the original was like?

Seriously though- it's pretty lame to be critical of folks that create code FOR FREE. That again, is FREE. And usually on their own free time.

Don't like the fact that you can't find a free access clone? Pull together a team and create one yourself, that's pretty much where all other successful open-source/free software projects came from- folks that wanted something and that didn't blame others for not making it for them.

No one owes you anything. Had you just asked the question "does anyone know if there's a free Access clone out there?" without the disparaging connotations about free software, you would've gotten a much friendlier response.

Buy access if it's what you really want. There are very cheap non-profit rates, check www.techsoup.org or www.1computerbargains.com.

look at the blg blue message on the front of here and guess which is the OS RDBMS of choice

christo

and phpmyadmin will make it easy for non-techies to use.

Just the opposite.

There's an oxymoron if I ever heard one. The problem with Access is that it takes NO SKILL AT ALL to use. So people that don't really know squat about relational database design end up creating crap.

I agree with rodk - Whilst there are a few reasonable applications kicking around for Windoze (er, such as Adobe's stuff), Microsoft did't write them, and Abcess isn't one of them !

christo

whitson: if you want, have a look at SapDB
. It's free, comes with GUIs but I've found it a hell to get it working...

Gee, sounds like they have succeeded All they need to do is make it crash every 30 minutes and they will have a perfect clone

I use Access each day at my work. I now have the task of rebuilding a 20mb front end that is made in VB and creating it in PHP & MySQL. Access is NOT a commercial solution, we have 20 people using it and I am the only thing holding this P.O.S together.

Cant wait till i have finished it. Going to take me about 6 months though.

BTW, PHP or JSP with MySQL are always my first choices

I developed with Access several years ago and found out that for certain projects its an okay platform (I kept bumping into its limitations and stopped using it). But if it works best for you, then great. However, the best project I ever did with it used MySQL for the backend. I just used Access for forms, reports and macros. I used pass-through queries to let MySQL do the heavy lifting.

If you weren't aware of this, I just wanted to let you know that with an Office Developer's Edition, you can distribute a royalty-free version of Access. The scenario works something like this:

1. You upgrade to a Office Developer's Edition.
2. You develop an Access database.
3. You process it for distribution. This compiles the .mdb into an .mde and bundles it with an Access runtime engine. This means the users of your database will not have access to the forms, reports and queries. They can't make new databases. They can just view your .mde.
4. Distribute as many copies as you want for free.

hi to all
I must say that I agree with tank80, MySQL kicks *** with PHP. stable, and easy to use (once you know it of course).
it's tops

eheh tnx tjchlorinehead

FYI, i've found this one to be a very stable and powerful DB
it's all made in Java with full SQL92 compliance
maybe not your choice if you don't work with Java, however it's always a good thing to remember

McKoiDB

Have fun!

Wow, that was a little harsh, no? I don't think that one's coming back.

if you notice, his last post was the 6th of Feb (that one) and he hasn't posted since!