Essentially, I want what Access can do, but for a web based solution that isn't Microsoft.
I would guess someone has already made something like this. The functionality Access has is basically the following things:
CRUD of course
Building of the following things: -- Queries -- Forms -- Models
Filters, Find/Replace, etc.
You get the idea. I just feel like this should already exist. I'd rather not do the work if it is already available. I'm just having a very hard time finding it.
I'd like to eventually have it so that the users themselves, if they have the permissions to, can produce their own custom queries, save them, and such things like that. I don't really expect a basic Access replacement to have that functionality, but I intended to make it myself if I needed to.
Seems to be a file sharing service? None of its listed features involve interacting with databases AFAICT.
Now that looks promising. Two issues though.
Our data is sensitive. Cloud hosting it is not acceptable. Not because of liability issues, but because we don't like having our reputation in the hands of someone else. Even if we were covered in terms of liability, losing customer data, even if it is not our fault, means hurting our reputation.
I ideally would like what this is to be PHP and hosted by ourselves. The simple reason is that I am a developer in training and need experience working with code and such, but I don't really have ideas for projects I'd personally do just for learning.
I figure I can produce what we need, but I'd like to also produce something useful in a reasonable time frame, and so I figured the best way to do both is to just use what others have produced for the bare essentials and then learn by creating the more advanced functionality.
If it is the case, I can't believe no one has produced a web front end for a database to replace Access. I guess people have and it's never been open sourced?
It may just be that I lack the knowledge to use correct terms in searching for this.
I'm not sure if they are really what you are looking for but PowerBI (Microsoft) has a free (as in beer) version that you can use on your desktop for data analysis. Reports can be generated and hosted for you - but unless you pay big bucks for licencing your own servers your data will get hosted in the Azure cloud. The visualisations are open sourced and many people contribute, so plenty to choose from.
Another similar kind of thing is Pentaho CE which is open source - again its for making data analytics and reports rather than a generic database frontend.
The reason what you are looking for likely doesn't exist is that it's not that difficult to create a simple web front end to interact with a relational database like PostgreSQL or MariaDB. There are lot's of tutorials out there.
One word of advice - if security is a concern, you probabaly should pay someone who really knows what they are doing to oversee the project or review designs etc. Also, there is no problem using cloud hosting platforms - applying proper encryption, security and design will keep the data secure. I'd also rate the physical security AWS, Azure, and Digital Ocean have as being way better than what most companies could afford for their own data centres - and believe me, I have seen alot
From a programmer point of view, closest thing to Access DB is Sqlite. All of your data would be in a single file and you don’t need to run a “server” to access it. Although, for the same reasons it doesn’t scale at all either.
As for tools to abstract the sql away, closest thing to what you are describing would be an ORM ( object relational mapping ). there are many framework and libraries in many languages which this functionality would be the whole or part of their purpose. For example YII framework in php has ActiveRecord which works as ORM and has GII which functions as form builder. There are of course, many other frameworks in php that do similar things.
I should also say that in web development word, none of these are considered “front end”. There are JS libraries that allow you to do the same thing with browsers internal storage mechanisms, but they only mostly make sense as part of a web app to reduce the amount of round trips to back end servers.
All of these was to say that, it seems to me, you are, or at least at the time that you posted this, approaching the problem that you are trying to solve incorectly
Yes, there is. It is known as “Rekall”, originally developed by Mike Richardsson.
In 1996 I was very unhappy with Microsoft, therefore l looked for a replacement of Access and I found Rekall. Very good database frontend software running on Linux. It is been in use ever since until now. But I have to find a new solution, because Rekall is no longer being maintained. I am looking for a solution that need not necessarily be web based, as it is only used within the office.
Can anybody recommend something suitable?
