Social Security is still using IBM's IMS DB since the 1960's. They switched from VS/COBOL frontends to React-based GUI frontends, and so have many other government agencies. Several SSA departamental backoffice systems also use Access. The State of Connecticut is the biggest Access user. I have Access developer friends working on large agency projects.
Well, I'm sure they antagonized many customers when Access applications stopped working because it could no longer automate Outlook.
No doubt, they did.
I hope you'reright. I just learned the other day that Microsoft Publisher will cease to work after October 2026. There will be no alternative.
Many would call Access antiquated. In the olden days, we chose the software tool that was best for building the application that needed building. No one would consider using BAL to build a business application or FORTRAN either. However, many of my COBOL programs called subroutines that were built with FORTRAN or BAL or whatever was most suitable for the particular task. Now that the inmates are running the asylum, the children want to use the latest and greatest. Who cares what is most appropriate. The needs of the business are irrelevant.
On the other hand, they spent millions on a web app that didn't need to be real time and hundreds of thousands on ipads and hot spots to support it since the clients of the visiting nurses didn't have WiFi. This app should have been done with Access for a few hundred thousand in about 6 months but the web app took over two years and was still late. The database behind the web app was unnormalized and so they needed a maintenance contract of a half-million a year to make changes as the survey changed. And the app did only ONE survey because it was totally hardcoded. All the questions were hard coded on forms and the users had to spend thousands on maintenance to change a single word which they (or an admin) should have been able to change themselves without the need of programming support and weeks of a test cycle to implement. The Access app would have run on the existing laptops and could have been sync'd with the master once the nurse got back to the office or home that evening. Nothing was going to happen immediately so real time and all the extra expense of hardware and hotspots was downright dumb.
I heard about that project. For that past 5 years a friend upgraded over 300 Access apps from 2003 to 2016 and is still streamlining most of them. Then there's the Visual FoxPro apps and other ongoing stuff at the Health Dept. The State's new IT Director hates Access and wants to replace them all with web apps. Meantime, they're moving all the native backend data to SQL Server.
In the uk there have been at least two excel ‘catastrophes’ in the last few years. The first when it was stated the level of covid infections had stabilised at 1m - actually due to the row limit of excel. And a couple of years ago the release of data on Afghan nationals fighting against the taliban - a simple file copy put the data out there. Wasn’t even password protected
Dumb as a rock. That's why they chose to waste MILLIONS on an unnecessary web app that should have taken 20% of the time and cost 10% of the budget. But who cares. It is not his money. It is MY money and yours too probably. The web app was unnecessary because the data didn't need to be live AND sync'ing the data collected on a client visit can easily wait until the nurse returns to the office and so no new hardware was needed either. It was a total boondoggle and money probably changed hands. And the fact that it was totally unnormalized means that it was useless for creating additional surveys. The Access app would have been normalized and so could have supported an infinite number of different surveys for different purposes.
That’s the nature of programs like Access and Python, any novice (like myself) can start tinkering immediately without formal training, which can lead to unexpected exploits. Unfortunately, some of us feel compelled to help because proprietary software doesn’t always fit every situation gracefully. That’s why people like me create bridge programs to fill the gaps.
HaHaHa. Sometimes I think to myself, "Just wait until Pat gets a load of this guy's post". Maybe the ACCESS team should just grey out the ability to make forms and reports until at least one relationship is built in the relationship window. But really, ACCESS is no different than any other software product. If you attempt to use it in a manner that it was not intended to be used, you should expect problems. I don't care if its EXCEL or Quickbooks or a Computer Aided Design product.
I have a cousin who plans to move to Apple and alternatives to MS Office over this one. She creates regular newsletters for a couple of organizations she supports. Without Publisher, she'll need an alternative anyway, but she won't just stop with that one application.
Many years ago, partly in jest, I suggested that in place of a license key, users could only install Access if they passed a 10 question quiz on Database Normalization.
Would that prevent improperly built Access applications? Perhaps viewing a mandatory tutorial video on how to properly design and build an Access app in order to unlock the designer functions?
