Alternatives to Access

Question

Are there any alternatives to MS Access?

Requirements:

• Portable Database file
• Integrated form development for data entry
• No compiling necessary. Can be modified on the fly.

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Two more requirements:

• Available for Linux or Windows

• Does not have to be free

  EDIT: Emphasised Integrated form development for data entry as the top voted answers for this question, at the time of edit, both recommend a simple database system. The reason why Access is still so hard to replace for simple department level CRUD (and more) applications is the integration of database, data entry forms and reporting tool. Simply recommending a database does not answer the question as posed.

Answer 1

SQLite is awesome.

Answer 2

SQLite is always my choice for lightweight databases, though it doesn't have a form creator as it's just a database.

SQLite is great because:

• It's just a library to be called by your application, not a server.
• There's no configuration.
• Your database is just a file.

(... and you can use in memory databases for testing, for those addicted to unit tests :)

Answer 3

OpenOffice.org

i've never used ms access and even despised it, but recently i had to do some order/customer fiddling on my own so i decided to give it a try and it worked OK at least for my own needs.

Answer 4

The one that comes with OpenOffice might be what you're looking for, it's called "Base" I believe: http://dba.openoffice.org

I voted for zacherates because I like SQLite too, though.

Answer 5

There used to be an awesome product for dos called Q&A this became http://www.lantica.com/ but I haven't looked at it since the dos version.

Alternatively try this wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_office_suites there are some tables of comparisons near the bottom.

Answer 6

FileMaker meets your requirements, although it is not something that I would recommend for collaborative development.

Answer 7

Your options seem to be:

1. SQL Server Express. This used to be called the MSDE

2. SQL Server Compact Edition.

3. MySQL.

4. SQLite.

5. VistaDB.

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I'm modifying this to add the only real contender I've found: Kexi

http://kexi-project.org/

I can't say that I've used it, but it looks like it will do everything you want.

Answer 8

Possibly you missed this Q & A when you searched the site for an answer to this question. You may find some good options there too.

Answer 9

I've used 4th Dimension in the past. I don't know, however, if it requires compilation - but it can be compiled.

But its design features are extremely friendly in my opinion.

Answer 10

I've done a lot of MS-Access development and from a form design standpoint or RAD (rapid application development) standpoint it's hard to beat.

However you can use MS-Access in conjunction with another Database Server that will give you flexibility down the road. My suggestion would be to use Sybase Advantage Database Server. I'm a bit biased as I support the product but we have a free Local server version for you to try out and later you can implement a full client/server setup by simply changing the connection. Advantage DevZone

In the case that you use another database engine you will likely be using ODBC for your connection type which Advantage supports along with JDBC, OLEDB, .NET, PHP, etc.

Answer 11

VistaDB is the only alternative if you going to run your website at shared hosting (almost all of them won't let you run your websites under Full Trust mode) and also if you need simple x-copy deployment enabled website.

Answer 12

Check out Filemaker