The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[MattH]

A couple of years ago a colleague built a new database to process some project data in Access. I genuinely didn't know it was still a thing.

[Mr Larrington]

This unit has been using Access of late, to try to assist in the building of games mods but because it’s so utterly soul-destroying I tend only to do so when waiting on the von Brandenburgs' cats.  Which happens infrequently enough that I've forgotten what I did the last time and have to start again, with extra Bad Swears.

I did actually use it for work once, but that was about thirty years ago and the bits I half-remembered from then don’t appear to be there now

[Beardy]

Nobody has mentioned MS Access yet ...  🏳️🏳️🏳️

That's because approximately nobody uses it.

I tried to use it to demonstrate how simple that was after a particularly fruitless rant at a team I was working with about using excel as a database, but I gave up when someone decided that Sharepoint was the universal tool for project management, budget tracking and expenses.

I did try and use Sharepoint as a joint file repository for excel spreadsheets but senior management t kept asking me to email them the files every time I sent them an embedded Sharepoint link. 

[Adam]

Nobody has mentioned MS Access yet ...  🏳️🏳️🏳️

That's because approximately nobody uses it.

Up to about 10 years ago, the most common client database/wealth management software package used by UK financial advisers was written in MS Access.  And it worked very well.  I remember reading in about 2015 that Microsoft were ending support of Access by 2024, so started the process of identifying a more suitable alternative software package. 

One of the many reasons I took early retirement in 2018 was to avoid the actual process of migrating everything (as I'd had the headaches of doing the previous migration to the current system from a mainframe Tripos based system in 1995 when the firm was much smaller), so left that to my successor!

[chrisbainbridge]

I run the business side of my work on an Access designed database and it works beautifully. Has done for 29 years and will outlive me. I believe it is still in use in many private hospitals for maintaining individual consultants records and is only now being updated. I refused the update as it added no functionality I need and my team would kill me if I changed something.

[Peter]

Chris, if you think your  "team" would kill the goose that lays the golden egg you need to upgrade your team, THEN the system, if necessary!

[citoyen]

Christ, I’d forgotten Access ever existed. Thanks for reminding me. Not.

I’ve long since given up trying to explain to people that a spreadsheet is not a database. That ship is well over the horizon by now.

[citoyen]

What is it with these people?   - we've used the same insurer for about 5 years, with the same conversation each year reducing the (increased) renewal quote by 10-15%.

I also had the same conversation with my home insurance provider every year. Until last year. They seem to have stopped the customer-who-can-be-bothered-to-call discount.

I stayed with them anyway as I’ve been generally happy with the service and they dealt with a recent claim well. Still came as a bit of a shock though.

[TheLurker]

...a spreadsheet is not a database. That ship is well over the horizon by now.

Thirty plus years over the horizon.  Advert in the Health Service Journal, 1991/2, "Experience with Excel required to develop databases."  I was appalled.

[Auntie Helen]

I used Microsoft access 10 years ago to do a database for songwriter royalties. I took over from a woman who had had a breakdown after dealing manually with the CSV files that came from PRS etc. She imported them into Excel and manually adjusted all the different rows, of which there were thousands upon thousands, to try to calculate the different road is due for different splits of artists and different percentages.

I wrote a quick access database, which did this work once a month in two hours. She used to work three days per week every week on it. Excel was completely the wrong tool and she was not very good at Excel. Anyway, access worked so much better.

[T42]

Years ago I wrote a package for a client who surveyed sewers for local cancels.  For speed I used VB6 and its Jet database, and even got wireframe 3D modelling to work.

Next thing I knew he had installed it for Strasbourg City Council and they were using it on 32 PCs with a central server.  It seemed to be pretty robust, too.

[ian]

I run the business side of my work on an Access designed database and it works beautifully. Has done for 29 years and will outlive me. I believe it is still in use in many private hospitals for maintaining individual consultants records and is only now being updated. I refused the update as it added no functionality I need and my team would kill me if I changed something.

I fear I inadvertently supplied a fair portion of Harley and Wimpole St my own brand Access concoction back in the early 2000s. One of them paid - not in cash - but a free fortnight in his unoccupied château. We slept in a different room each night. We meaning my wife, not him, it wasn’t that kind of gig.

[T42]

I run the business side of my work on an Access designed database and it works beautifully. Has done for 29 years and will outlive me. I believe it is still in use in many private hospitals for maintaining individual consultants records and is only now being updated. I refused the update as it added no functionality I need and my team would kill me if I changed something.

I fear I inadvertently supplied a fair portion of Harley and Wimpole St my own brand Access concoction back in the early 2000s. One of them paid - not in cash - but a free fortnight in his unoccupied château. We slept in a different room each night. We meaning my wife, not him, it wasn’t that kind of gig.

Chum of mine got a buckshee Toyota Supra that way, back in the 80's.

[Flite]

Excel is far better than any database. Fact.

Are you old enough to remember Lotus software?
Had a brilliant database. (for it's time....)
Taken over by Sage, I think, who wanted the database.
They promptly stopped support for private (non-business) users.

I did eventually realise that the reason everyone else used excel instead of a database was that microsoft's home package had word and excel, but not a proper database.

[Giraffe]

I used Lotus Approach for events for a long time. Eventually ran to 7 related DBs, as we had too many calculated fields (a 20,000-capacity overflowed short of the peak of a bit under 600 events). Couldn't have done it without Francis and Sheila. I guess that Access would've gone titsup even looking at that.

[Kim]

I'm old enough to remember Lotus 123 being better than Excel.

[MattH]

I remember Lotus 123 coming out and knocking Visicalc off top dog spot.

[Flite]

On the recommendation of a newly established computer engineer, in the days when computers were built to spec from components, the first computer for our small business ran Lotus software.
It did what it was told to do, instead of coming up with whizz-bang ideas nobody needs.

[mrcharly-YHT]

On the recommendation of a newly established computer engineer, in the days when computers were built to spec from components, the first computer for our small business ran Lotus software.
It did what it was told to do, instead of coming up with whizz-bang ideas nobody needs.

Yebbut Ami Pro was an absolute Pig.

Wordperfect did what it said on the box, and was nicely cross-platform to boot (I used it on DOS and VAX, no file incompatibilities).

[Regulator]

Nobody has mentioned MS Access yet ...  🏳️🏳️🏳️

That's because approximately nobody uses it.

I tried to use it to demonstrate how simple that was after a particularly fruitless rant at a team I was working with about using excel as a database, but I gave up when someone decided that Sharepoint was the universal tool for project management, budget tracking and expenses.

I did try and use Sharepoint as a joint file repository for excel spreadsheets but senior management t kept asking me to email them the files every time I sent them an embedded Sharepoint link.

SharePoint is the IT version of Marmite.   It is an invention of Stan and should be destroyed utterly to DETH.

[Beardy]

I remember Lotus 123 coming out and knocking Visicalc off top dog spot.

it was SuperCalc that was top dog when 123 was introduced to the world was it not? VisiCalc was a freeware offering? Unless I’m misrembering.

Lotus Notes was, if I remember correctly, a very early precursor to Sharepoint with added integrated email.


I cut my computing teeth on SuperCalc, WordStar and dBase 3 all on DOS3.1 running from am 20Mb hard drive.

[MattH]

No Visicalc came first, and was commercial. SuperCalc was a year later, addressing additional platforms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCalc

[Mr Larrington]

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet, first released for the Apple II, and was ported to divers other OSs.  Wikinaccurate says it cost “under $100” in 1979.  SuperCalc came along a year or so later, initially for CP/M before being ported elsewhere.

Edit: xp with MattH

[Kim]

Wordperfect did what it said on the box, and was nicely cross-platform to boot (I used it on DOS and VAX, no file incompatibilities).

The rot set in when people wanted to spend all their time in a WYSIWYG editor (as popularised by MSWord), and subsequently forgot what a word processor was actually for.

[MattH]

TeX is still around...