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My team is responsible for the service delivery with dozens of services and thousands of customers. But we have no common solution in place yet to share information on which customer has signed for which service and the status of service delivery.

We are starting to build a database and populated a MS Access database, which then became a MySQL database. But we still do not have any front-end interface for the whole team to view and input stuffs into the DB.

Would you have any recommendation? Is there any off-the-shelf application that can deliver web forms, web lists etc from the DB?

My wish is to find a solution "ready-for-use" where I do not need to write code.

Ideally the customization to do our own web forms would be a WYSIWYG tool (like Zoho Creator for example), or if not WYSIWYG with very minor coding. I actually tried Zoho but the UI is not very good and the data is hosted at Zoho which is not acceptable for us.

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you should post this on stackoverflow, this isn't the right question for this forum. – mathaix Nov 6 '09 at 13:56
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Stackoverflow is for programming questions, the buy/build question should be appropriate here, IMO. – James Black Nov 6 '09 at 17:50
+1 @James. If I had something ready to use and did not need to write code, why would I need a programmer? Maybe SuperUser.com. – JeffO Feb 12 '10 at 13:37
Probably most appropriate place for this question (with most knowledgeable audience) is serverfault.com – Ross Feb 9 '11 at 14:02
Damian, don't worry too much about these people telling you where you should move your questions. I've been told to move questions from one site to another only to be told that I should move it again. Learn the purposes of the various sites and use your best judgment as to where it belongs. – Scott Feb 11 '11 at 19:37
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12 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Why'd you switch away from MSAccess? If "no coding" is a main goal, then that platform would have been very close to what you need. With all it's downsides, handling several thousand records for MSAccess it not a problem.

You can still use MSAccess as a front-end to MySQL, though. You can link the databases (Through an ODBC MySql driver) and use Access for the GUI part of it.

As a pro programmer, I would not use MSAccess for a new project. But taking into account that you do not want to write code and the fact that this sounds like a fairly straightfoward project, MSAccess is probably the best I could recommend.

All of this is null and void if you must absolutely have this based on the web. I can't think of anything that lets you build this as a web app (code generators with GUI-based, zero code configuration) that I can vouch for it working out of the box. There are several products that claim to do this exact thing, though.

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Having several users on Access will be a problem though, as one person may have it locked so no one else can access it. – James Black Nov 6 '09 at 18:32
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Hmmm... That does not happen. Access does not use exclusive locks on MDB files by default. – Gabriel Magana Nov 6 '09 at 22:51
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+1 on this too. Access is fantastic for things like this, and most people who think otherwise only know Access 98 or something. Nowadays Access is amazing. Plus you can easily find consultants to work on it if necessary. – Jason Nov 7 '09 at 3:19
+1 for Access. I used to do telecoms billing for a client on Access and it worked well until they got to a few million rows, then slowed down (a lot). For this application it should be fine, as there'll only be a few thousand rows. – Steve Jones Jul 11 '12 at 11:02
up vote 2 down vote

A few suggestions:

  1. Quickbase by Intuit (http://quickbase.intuit.com/). It's sold as SaaS, so there will be ongoing fees. I have not used it, but did a fair bit of research on it for a project earlier this year.

  2. Semi-custom software. There are frameworks available for building applications on top of databases. They're generally targeted to developers, but some are fairly easy to get an application built quickly and with a lot of flexibility. I have used Ironspeed (http://www.ironspeed.com/) for several projects.

  3. Access. Based on what you wrote, this seems to be exactly the type of application Access was designed for. As with any solution, there are tradeoffs here. What are the reasons you converted from Access to MySQL?

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up vote 1 down vote

Get ruby developer to build out the rails scaffolding for your database. It will give you a simple crud web based interface and can be customized from there.

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+1 - To offset the downgrade. I don't know why this was downgraded. The idea isn't bad, as RoR is a very fast way to get a website up and running, and works very well my MySQL. If you want to downgrade, please give some reason to help Adam understand. – James Black Nov 6 '09 at 17:43
Thanks James - I agree, of course. Maybe my answer is too short. – Adam Nov 6 '09 at 21:45
+1 from me too. Short answers are good anyway... – Jason Nov 7 '09 at 3:18
I'm guessing you meant a 'crude web interface' not a 'crud web interface' :) – Jeremy Parsons Jan 24 '11 at 14:54
CRUD = Create Retrieve Update Delete – Adam Jan 30 '11 at 0:46
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up vote 1 down vote

Django's admin interface can solve your problem. No coding needed, just the initial setup for creating your models based on your current database.

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up vote 1 down vote

After looking at a lot of questions about replacements for Access I compiled the following:

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up vote 0 down vote

Without more detail about what requirements you have you won't really get any off-the-shelf suggestions, as any solution like that is very dependent on what you need.

Your best bet, to get something done that meets all your demands will be to get it written for you. Now, it may be possible to use some off-the-shelf components to speed up the development, so your customized solution isn't completely written from scratch.

So, if you need to keep track of credit cards and bank account info then there are already solutions to store that for you, such as PayPal, though Google and Amazon also have solutions, and there are many others.

The more specific you can be the more you can be helped.

If you ask on stackoverflow you will need to be asking how to develop this, as that site is for programming questions.

I think this question is appropriate here, up to a point, as it gets to the core of buy or build.

If you find a tool you want to purchase you will just need to change your business practice to fit their model, so if you are willing to do that, explain your model, knowing you will pay a cost to migrate to a different approach.

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up vote 0 down vote

if you liked access and want 'free' try OpenOffice.org base --its similar to acces and can create simple forms and lists.

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up vote 0 down vote

I will echo the Intuit QuickBase suggestion and add DabbleDB (list of similar services: http://webappsatwork.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-coghead-customers-are-supposed-to.html).

You might also have a look at Salesforce and SugarCRM. I bet you could do this really well on Salesforce.

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up vote 0 down vote

Try MyDbExplorer. You can get it from:

http://www.mydbexplorer.com

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up vote 0 down vote

Check SQLMaestro. I think it is free for MysQL. You can build forms with complete filters,insert,edit delete ability in no time. I have used this before and was really impressed.

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up vote 0 down vote

My company tracks it's implementation tasks, milestones, support cases, customer versions, etc. etc. in SalesForce.com. No programming. You will have to setup some online forms but it's not difficult.

And oh yeah, we also track leads, proof of concepts, and sales in it.

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up vote 0 down vote

You can try DaDaBIK, it's Open Source and it should fit your needs.

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