free software alternative to Access

[Bill Sconce]

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 14:03:23 -0400
Dan Coutu <coutu at snowy-owl.com> wrote:

> Peter Dobratz wrote:
> 
> > Does anyone know of any free software packages that we can use?  
> > Basically, we have hikers and teams of hikers that raise money.  We 
> > want to keep track of how much money each hiker contributed, and keep 
> > their names and addresses, so that we can mail them a brochure for 
> > next year's hike.  Most of the laptops that people own or borrow for 
> > the event have some version of windows on them.  Some sort of bootable 
> > CD with USB flash drives for the datastore might be optimal.
> >
> > --Peter
> 
> Well, it isn't a replacement for Access because it is a whole lot better 
> :-) but I'd recommend using MySQL.
> 
> It runs well on Windows, if that's what you have to use, and has an ODBC 
> component to provide easy interfacing to Office applications (assuming 
> that's important to you.) It also has a GUI interface that you can 
> download, for free, from the MySQL website and that GUI also runs on 
> Windows (and Linux, of course.) You can even put the MySQL database on a 
> Linux server and access it via ODBC from Windows if you like.
> 
> The main problem, of course, is that it doesn't break as often as Access 
> or have the lame restrictions on scalability of Access. But you can 
> probably manage to live with that...
> 
> Dan


To which I'd add something (something which I'd have overlooked had not
Guy Pardoe and Ted Roche just made it the subject of last week's
excellent MonadLUG meeting):

    phpMyAdmin
    
    http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/
    
It is billed as an administration tool (which is what it is, of course),
but "admin" could mean "prototyping" or "rapid app development".  If you
already know what you want to do phpMyAdmin provides data entry forms,
SQL query construction, and a whole lot more, all right out of the box.

Certainly not a "replacement" for Access, but a valuable tool - and for
some (knowledgeable) folks it could do the job of getting a new app
rolling.

You'll have to force any crashes your client needs to feel at home,
of course.  Pulling the power plug might help...

-Bill