Forum Discussion
Moving Away from MS Access
tsgiannis you know, I came here for help and all I've gotten is different responses telling me I either am wrong for wanting to move away from Access, or people telling me I asked the question "wrong". I thought this was supposed to be a support and help community. I'll just take my questions elsewhere. Good day.
Just because you don't like the "answers" doesn't mean they are wrong.
Lets take a simple example.
Some years ago i read a book about migration of a Simple Access Application to a Web equivalent (ASP.NET i think i can't remember) .
It was around 300- 400 pages where the author took step by step the whole procedure from migrating the tables to SQL using Entity framework, designing the web "forms",the reports and so on...the surprising fact was the Access was a simple few forms - few reports application nothing heavy by any means...just a simple just over the beginner level template ...yet it took its effort ...it took its time...
SO yes you can move away from Access any time and there are great alternative...you want desktop ..then .NET or Java fills the blank perfectly ..you want web ..even better PHP/JS/.NET and a ton of frameworks are here to help for the UI...for the BE is much "easier"..just make a pick MSSQL/MySQL/Oracle/IBM/Firebird ...there are just too many options.....either paid or free.....
Some years ago my boss was discussing the transferring of the BE of a huge Access application to SQL...i replied NP...just "close" the IT department for 1 year ( i was the only "real" developer and i was also the system administrator)...let me transfer the table/queries and then optimize the whole application in order to use SQL efficiently...of course he denied ..saying that i was exaggerating and others have done it just by using one of the utilities that are in the "market" ...and its so "simple...we just migrate and we fix problems as they pop up".....i refused to take this lonely road.the whole idea along with the proposed planning was dumped...a few years ago i left the company...till today they are using Access and unless something magical pops up they will do for the next 20 years for sure.
So as i said in my previous "you didn't liked" post...nothing is holding you back ...the word "impossible" simply doesn't apply in these cases... if you are the manager you just have to train/enhance your team to do the job...if you are the boss you just have to hire some people to do the job...if you are the developer/administrator you just need to calculate your extra hours you are going to cost to your company to take such a task .....so as i said is all about money...either in explicit or implicit form but is money ....if you are not ready to spend/charge or whatever simply you will come back here or in another "friendlier" forum and find out the same fundamental truth.