OpenOffice Base is your MS Access replacement

I get asked this question all the time. People ask where they can get a MS Access replacement for little or no money. When I ask them why they want something like MS Access, they can’t articulate why they feel that they need a program like MS Access, but they still “need” it. I searched for this elusive MS Access replacement. I did a lot of work looked at a lot of programs and nothing fit the bill of a MS Access replacement for little or no money. I did finally succeed, and I’ll tell you about it after the break.

MS Access is a database application development system. Notice that I did not call it a database. Access uses the Jet Database engine for its native database system. Access is all the tools and pretty GUI that allows people to do some complex database things. So, that was the first thing I had to find was a product that provided all the GUI necessary to do complex database things. The product had to use other database systems to do the actually work of storing information.

There were a couple of things that I wanted to make sure that the product could do. It had to connect to other enterprise system in a relatively native way like Access can do with enterprise database systems. It needed a somewhat complete report builder. With these limitations in mind I went searching.

I looked at HSQLDB , Derby, and MySQL. These are open source and have a free version that is full powered. They don’t have a form builder, or a native report generator, and reports are an important part of any database. The people in the upper echelons on an organization want to be able to see information from the database in an organized format with summary numbers and such. These three candidates are just the database engines, nothing more.

I looked at Filemaker Pro. There is a version for both Mac and Windows. It had a native database engine. It could talk to Enterprise databases, and it had a form and report generator. It does not come free, and so I had to let that go as a MS Access replacement that is at little or no cost. I use that product for myself, because I believe in learning any tool, and also because it has come a long way from when I first played with it. It does not satisfy on the limitations I set.

I looked at Bento, but there is not native report generator of the power of the MS Access one, nor is it a true relational database. It’s a good personal database, and that’s it.

I despaired until I was reminded about Base in OpenOffice and NeoOffice. Base was originally clumsy and somewhat cantankerous. The Database Engine was about as cranky and an old car. They replaced their database engine and replaced it with HSQLDB. Base has a form generator as well as a native report builder. The form and report generator are in fact Writer documents, which means that the reports can be printed as a pdf document.

That means that OpenOffice and NeoOffice Base is the low cost or free MS Access replacement you are looking for. The bonus to all of this is that you can use the same database files with all three OSes using OpenOffice. Finally a cross platform desktop database application solution. This is the Open Source Desktop Database Product of all TechWarriors.

[ad#ad-3]

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Related posts:

1. The data types in an OpenOffice Base Database
2. Replacing MS Access with Filemaker Pro
3. How to Create Reports in OpenOffice Base
4. How to create a form for data entry in OpenOffice Base
5. Creating trouble-free Tables in OpenOffice Base

Tagged as: MS Access replacement