{"slug": "microsoft-access", "name": "Microsoft Access", "category": "databases", "category_name": "Databases", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 17, "warners": 2, "score": 5.024, "rising": -0.31, "first": "2025-11-26", "latest": "2026-09-22", "why": "I remember watching one person with Access set up dashboards that worked 1000x better than all of the dozen SAAS tools", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 8, "compare": 2, "warn": 2}, "spark": [1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I remember watching one person with Access set up dashboards that worked 1000x better than all of the dozen SAAS tools", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Microsoft Access", "Access"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796946817, "item_id": 49809176, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49809176", "by": "alwillis", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Access is so good.", "excerpt": "> Access is so good. I can't believe there's no universal equivalent for Linux and Mac. On the Mac, it's FileMaker,[1] which was released in 1985. Claris is a subsidiary of Apple. [1]: https://www.claris.com/blog/2026/claris-filemaker-2026-is-now-available", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived"}, {"id": 776673824, "item_id": 48542114, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48542114", "by": "threetonesun", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I remember watching one person with Access set up dashboards that worked 1000x better than all of the dozen SAAS tools", "excerpt": "TBQH it used to be easy. I remember watching one person with Access set up dashboards that worked 1000x better than all of the dozen SAAS tools no one can wrangle together today. Small businesses pushed updates and menus from Frontpage. We used to spin up quick code on our calculators, meanwhile our much more powerful phones act like executing our own code is an act of terrorism. LLMs (maybe) get us a little closer t", "context": "", "use_case": "dashboards", "switched_from": "", "story": "It used to be hard"}, {"id": 758047202, "item_id": 47377950, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47377950", "by": "zackmorris", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Maybe get back to what we used to have with apps like HyperCard, FileMaker and Microsoft Access", "excerpt": "A -> (expletive) -> B I think we're all in denial about how bad software engineering has gotten. When I look at what's required to publish a web page today vs in 1996, I'm appalled. When someone asks me how to get started, all I can do is look at them and say \"I'm so sorry\": https://xkcd.com/1168/ So \"coding was always the hard part\". All AI does is obfuscate how the sausage gets made. I don't see it fixing the under", "context": "", "use_case": "user-controlled app building", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Didn't Simplify Software Engineering: It Just Made Bad Engineering Easier"}, {"id": 740466656, "item_id": 46279166, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46279166", "by": "xnx", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lack of something as accessible and useful as Access is a major hole.", "excerpt": "Agree. Lack of something as accessible and useful as Access is a major hole. AppSheet comes close: https://about.appsheet.com/home/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI agents are starting to eat SaaS"}, {"id": 736932480, "item_id": 46058280, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058280", "by": "wswope", "date": "2025-11-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it was a work of art more effective than anything I could\u2019ve ever come up with", "excerpt": "I volunteered at an archaeology lab run by the state govt a few months ago. Knowing I was a data engineer, one of the archaeologists asked me to take a look at the cataloging system he\u2019d cobbled together on his own: a shared-drive Access database with a full-featured CRUD interface that the whole office had been using for years. I was able to clean up one stray bug he had, and confirm his suspicion that one particula", "context": "Data engineer", "use_case": "Shared-drive cataloging system", "switched_from": "", "story": "After 15 years, I use Outlook as my build pipeline"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 773349616, "item_id": 48334351, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48334351", "by": "zarzavat", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I visited a piano store once that was running everything off MS Access.", "excerpt": "Exactly, people confuse \"doesn't scale\" with \"is a bottleneck\". There's many applications whereby hitting the limits of SQLite is either a physical impossibility, or implies that the application has achieved success such that replacing SQLite is the least of anyone's problems. I visited a piano store once that was running everything off MS Access. If only they had switched to HA technologies, they would be able to se", "context": "", "use_case": "Store operations database", "switched_from": "", "story": "SQLite is all you need for durable workflows"}, {"id": 751939330, "item_id": 46996208, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46996208", "by": "yndoendo", "date": "2026-02-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "so I don't have to use such a bad GUI", "excerpt": "Red Hat employees can use Fedora on their MacBook. Fedora Asahi Remix [0]. Unfortunately in the business world you often have to use tools that others outside of your company uses. I would never choose to use Oracle Database but since the client uses it then I must setup a development / QA environment for it. I don't know of any Microsoft Access Database solution that runs on non-Windows OSes. Any time I interact wit", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Big FOSS vendors don't eat their own dogfood\u2013 they pay for proprietary groupware"}]}], "who": [{"by": "wswope", "context": "Data engineer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058280", "date": "2025-11-26"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["dashboards", "store operations database", "converting dbase data", "platform database backend", "user-controlled app building", "guestbook database"], "compared": [{"slug": "filemaker", "name": "FileMaker", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "microsoft-excel", "name": "Microsoft Excel", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48058757", "title": "DBase: 1979-2026", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47390233", "title": "Office.eu launches as Europe's sovereign office platform", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46268452", "title": "AI agents are starting to eat SaaS", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46017797", "title": "After 15 years, I use Outlook as my build pipeline", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49808023", "title": "Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48463519", "title": "It used to be hard", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 2, "warn": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 2, "warn": 1}, "2026-06": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 796946817, "item_id": 49809176, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49809176", "by": "alwillis", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Access is so good.", "excerpt": "> Access is so good. I can't believe there's no universal equivalent for Linux and Mac. On the Mac, it's FileMaker,[1] which was released in 1985. Claris is a subsidiary of Apple. [1]: https://www.claris.com/blog/2026/claris-filemaker-2026-is-now-available", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived"}, {"id": 776673824, "item_id": 48542114, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48542114", "by": "threetonesun", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I remember watching one person with Access set up dashboards that worked 1000x better than all of the dozen SAAS tools", "excerpt": "TBQH it used to be easy. I remember watching one person with Access set up dashboards that worked 1000x better than all of the dozen SAAS tools no one can wrangle together today. Small businesses pushed updates and menus from Frontpage. We used to spin up quick code on our calculators, meanwhile our much more powerful phones act like executing our own code is an act of terrorism. LLMs (maybe) get us a little closer t", "context": "", "use_case": "dashboards", "switched_from": "", "story": "It used to be hard"}, {"id": 774266116, "item_id": 48391632, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48391632", "by": "coldtea", "date": "2026-06-03", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Access not dBase.", "excerpt": ">First to market is the winner even with an inferior product. See whatsapp and telegram I don't think so. We use Excel not Lotus 1-2-3. iOS and Android, not Palm and Blackberry OSes or whatever mobile shit MS had first. We use Gmail not AOL. Google not Lycos or Altavista. Chrome not Netscape. Facebook and co, not Friendster or MySpace. Word not WordPerfect. Access not dBase. And regarding WhatsApp it's not ICQ or MSN", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoPro warned it may not survive"}, {"id": 773349616, "item_id": 48334351, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48334351", "by": "zarzavat", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I visited a piano store once that was running everything off MS Access.", "excerpt": "Exactly, people confuse \"doesn't scale\" with \"is a bottleneck\". There's many applications whereby hitting the limits of SQLite is either a physical impossibility, or implies that the application has achieved success such that replacing SQLite is the least of anyone's problems. I visited a piano store once that was running everything off MS Access. If only they had switched to HA technologies, they would be able to se", "context": "", "use_case": "Store operations database", "switched_from": "", "story": "SQLite is all you need for durable workflows"}, {"id": 769457616, "item_id": 48091101, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48091101", "by": "mamcx", "date": "2026-05-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "Resurrect this kind of language is one of my goals (https://tablam.org) but of course with different takes. I think the main gist: you work not as app developer but as db developer, is something that is missing in some partial attempt like access and such. BTW: Wanna join me or help?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "DBase: 1979-2026"}, {"id": 768941824, "item_id": 48058864, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48058864", "by": "orionblastar", "date": "2026-05-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Microsoft Access 2.0 had filters to import and export data from and to DBF files.", "excerpt": "Microsoft Access 2.0 had filters to import and export data from and to DBF files. We used this in WFW 3.11 to convert from DBase to MS-Access and later on SQL Server. There were some Turbo C and Turbo Pascal source code that read DBF files, but hardly anyone used them. Most stored data is in text files that can be read by any application.", "context": "", "use_case": "converting DBase data", "switched_from": "dBase", "story": "DBase: 1979-2026"}, {"id": 758336752, "item_id": 47396047, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47396047", "by": "pjmlp", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We used it at Altitude Software, as one of the possible database backends for our platform", "excerpt": "We used it at Altitude Software, as one of the possible database backends for our platform, there were indee enough customers that it was a requirement to also support it on our ODBC configuration. During the MS-DOS => Windows transitions, some folks moved from doing xBase development into VB, or Access, instead of CA Objects or FoxPro.", "context": "", "use_case": "platform database backend", "switched_from": "", "story": "Office.eu launches as Europe's sovereign office platform"}, {"id": 758250384, "item_id": 47390649, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47390649", "by": "flumpcakes", "date": "2026-03-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "In 25 years I have never seen anyone use Microsoft Access in earnest.", "excerpt": "In 25 years I have never seen anyone use Microsoft Access in earnest. For the overwhelming majority of users I do not think this is an issue. The last time I used it was when studying for CLAiT Plus.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Office.eu launches as Europe's sovereign office platform"}, {"id": 758047202, "item_id": 47377950, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47377950", "by": "zackmorris", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Maybe get back to what we used to have with apps like HyperCard, FileMaker and Microsoft Access", "excerpt": "A -> (expletive) -> B I think we're all in denial about how bad software engineering has gotten. When I look at what's required to publish a web page today vs in 1996, I'm appalled. When someone asks me how to get started, all I can do is look at them and say \"I'm so sorry\": https://xkcd.com/1168/ So \"coding was always the hard part\". All AI does is obfuscate how the sausage gets made. I don't see it fixing the under", "context": "", "use_case": "user-controlled app building", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Didn't Simplify Software Engineering: It Just Made Bad Engineering Easier"}, {"id": 753312449, "item_id": 47082028, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47082028", "by": "tjohns", "date": "2026-02-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Microsoft Access was strictly file based.", "excerpt": "FileMarker Pro had a dedicated server product (FileMaker Server) that you could use for multi-user access. Claris still sells it: https://www.claris.com/filemaker/ Microsoft Access was strictly file based. You could drop the .mdb/.accdb file on a SMB share and it would support basic concurrency via lock files. However, you could also swap out the internal database engine (Jet) with anything else via ODBC, so your Acc", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Micasa \u2013 track your house from the terminal"}, {"id": 751939330, "item_id": 46996208, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46996208", "by": "yndoendo", "date": "2026-02-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "so I don't have to use such a bad GUI", "excerpt": "Red Hat employees can use Fedora on their MacBook. Fedora Asahi Remix [0]. Unfortunately in the business world you often have to use tools that others outside of your company uses. I would never choose to use Oracle Database but since the client uses it then I must setup a development / QA environment for it. I don't know of any Microsoft Access Database solution that runs on non-Windows OSes. Any time I interact wit", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Big FOSS vendors don't eat their own dogfood\u2013 they pay for proprietary groupware"}, {"id": 750262627, "item_id": 46891414, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46891414", "by": "mschuster91", "date": "2026-02-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "MS Access makes for incredibly powerful and incredibly hard to maintain \"shadow IT\"", "excerpt": "> In the 1990s there were people who thought OOP with point and click tools like FoxPro and Delphi would make it so easy to create software that everything could be built in-house without expert programmers. The invention of SQL was supposed to eliminate roles like Report Writer and Data Analyst because now business people could just write their own queries \"in English\" and get back answers. And yet, precisely that h", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Is Killing B2B SaaS"}, {"id": 743561251, "item_id": 46472578, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472578", "by": "susam", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "stored comments in an MS Access database", "excerpt": "This is pretty much how I began developing websites too. Except it was 2001 instead of 2026. And it was ASP (the classic ASP that predates ASP.NET) instead of Python. And I had a Windows 98 machine in my dorm room with Personal Web Server (PWS) running on it instead of GCP. It could easily have been a static website, but I happened to stumble across PWS, which came bundled with a default ASP website. That is how I go", "context": "", "use_case": "guestbook database", "switched_from": "", "story": "Publish (On Your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere"}, {"id": 740494913, "item_id": 46280932, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46280932", "by": "mike_hearn", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Access likely had higher market share but of a much smaller market.", "excerpt": "The modern version of Access is something like APEX. https://www.oracle.com/apex/ APEX is probably just as widely used now as Access was. Access likely had higher market share but of a much smaller market. There are gazillions of APEX apps out there.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI agents are starting to eat SaaS"}, {"id": 740466656, "item_id": 46279166, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46279166", "by": "xnx", "date": "2025-12-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Lack of something as accessible and useful as Access is a major hole.", "excerpt": "Agree. Lack of something as accessible and useful as Access is a major hole. AppSheet comes close: https://about.appsheet.com/home/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI agents are starting to eat SaaS"}, {"id": 736985184, "item_id": 46061574, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46061574", "by": "codelikeawolf", "date": "2025-11-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Access is hacky, but it works!", "excerpt": "> A horrible, horrible hack solution. But it worked! I ended up building an Access app at an enterprise-y company I used to work at because it would have taken years for IT to build it. The app did something super specific and kept needing super specific additional features, and there wasn't anything on the market that met our needs. The Access UI talked to another Access database on a shared network drive. I just fo", "context": "", "use_case": "Internal enterprise app", "switched_from": "", "story": "After 15 years, I use Outlook as my build pipeline"}, {"id": 736932480, "item_id": 46058280, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058280", "by": "wswope", "date": "2025-11-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it was a work of art more effective than anything I could\u2019ve ever come up with", "excerpt": "I volunteered at an archaeology lab run by the state govt a few months ago. Knowing I was a data engineer, one of the archaeologists asked me to take a look at the cataloging system he\u2019d cobbled together on his own: a shared-drive Access database with a full-featured CRUD interface that the whole office had been using for years. I was able to clean up one stray bug he had, and confirm his suspicion that one particula", "context": "Data engineer", "use_case": "Shared-drive cataloging system", "switched_from": "", "story": "After 15 years, I use Outlook as my build pipeline"}]}