May think that Access is already finished. But you are wrong. In fact, Access continues to move like a zombie, and its usage has neither increased nor decreased. Microsoft has tried to shut down the database more than once, but the user community has struggled to survive and survive – even if the old products such as FrontPage and Visual Basic 6 have been left out and buried underground.

It’s easy to despise Access as another legacy software nightmare. But the story of Access gives every software designer a lesson. It gives us insight into what makes a product alive, develops, and then remains a long-lasting secret after the expiration date.

How popular is Access?

We have to figure out one thing right away. Access is not dead, nor will it die. This seems to violate all the reasonable rules of the database software world, but this is a cruel reality

Data research companies have always found this: although there are not many companies using Access, they are very loyal. According to HG Insights, there are currently 140,000 companies using Access, which is half the number of companies using more specialized SQL Server. Infoclutch also has similar records. DB-Engines, which ranks database software based on frequency of occurrences on search, social media, and Stack Overflow, believes that Access is the ninth most popular database in the world:

Microsoft Access: A database with an undead body

Access ranks among the top 10 DB-Engines database leaderboards, and many of them are more powerful databases

These statistics almost certainly exaggerate the popularity of Access. Many companies use more than one kind of database software, and the applications they use to run Access are almost certain that the scope of application is relatively small, the data processed is relatively small, and unless the CEO has a desire to die, Access is the decision. Not used for critical parts of day-to-day operations. In addition, some companies use certain technologies without realizing that they are using those technologies. For example, every company that owns a WordPress site also relies on MySQL, even if someone else is hosting it for MySQL.

I am on AccThe secret of ess has its own experience. In 2009, I wrote a book about Access. The reason I wrote this book is very simple. Over the years, I have been using Access to provide fast, ad hoc data solutions—such as tracking collections, or managing invoices, payments, etc. that occur during my consulting work. All of these scenarios require more structure and data editing controls than Excel, but these are easily accepted by Access’s environment. A few tables, some relationships with constraints, a small set of queries, plus one or two reports – one can get the job done in the afternoon.

Having said that, I have always suggested putting the Access database behind your e-commerce site. If you do this, you are responsible for it.

I wrote this book to summarize the skills I learned and the pitfalls I encountered. Of course, these things will soon disappear and disappear. But to my surprise, this book has become one of my most popular. Sales continue to grow, and one can be sold every day or every two days. Obviously, there are still people interested in Access, even if it’s just because they want to end the chaos left by the previous generation of amateur programmers.

How to try to kill a program (and then end in failure)

Everyone who has done this in technology has seen the end of his favorite software. Abandoned Google projects can fill a whole cemetery. Microsoft is notorious for killing its own children, sometimes killing a few at a time. For example, when it shuts down Expression Studio, it is a whole family of web, design, and media coding tools that compete with Adobe.

But for some reason, when Microsoft stared at Access, they hesitated.

The first mistake is that they didn’t take the same steps as Silverlight, PhotoDraw, Minecraft, and many other tools, and decided not to get rid of Access in one step. Instead, Microsoft tried to encourage access to become irrelevant. First of all, they want to let Access know the difficulty by ignoring Access. With a few months left before the release of Office 2013, Microsoft has not even given an official reply to Access 2013.

Then they started to squander martial arts and put old, sometimes popular, spare features. For example, the function of importing old formats like dBASE has been removed. The ability to create pivot tables has also been removed. The ability to create an Access front end for a SQL Server database is gone, and the Upsizing Wizard for migrating an Access database to SQL Server is also removed. This is like a nightmare for Hostel. Every time it is released, microSoft will dump the Access piece, but the program still exists.

One of the most striking is that Microsoft is trying to provide an upgrade from the Access world. Soon, Microsoft built (and then gave up) more than three different frameworks to put the Access database on the Web. Two of them, the Access Web database (introduced in Access 2010) and the Access Web application (introduced in Access 2013) are all based on SharePoint and SQL Server. But neither of them succeeded, and Access 2019 became the first version in the last decade that had no web functionality at all.

Next we will introduce some of Access’s things that are not visible in other software that has been eliminated. We observed that Microsoft managed to provide an upgrade path to quit Access, then failed, and finally gave up. Like the monster that the science geek created, the creator has abandoned his creation, but still can’t kill it.

Access and lessons from its tenacious life

The old things are not surprising in the world of technology. After all, we still have COBOL. But the unusual thing about Access is that although the company that gave birth to it didn’t treat it well, it still can withstand it.

What makes Access live so long in such a limited situation? There are many cultural and practical reasons, but three points are particularly prominent.

1. Super User Divide

Access’s audience is a special group. This group is now rarely able to become a target audience: that is, the technicians who are not serious coders. This group of people get an Office macro to get around the problem, but they lack a formal programming background. Not long ago, we also made such people “super users.”

Helping super users can be dangerous. With a little knowledge, you can create very powerful weapons that will hit your feet. But there is also a huge potential for development. Providing a way for technicians to solve problems without writing code, they can make a difference—automate small tasks, manage their own data silos, and help maintain the organization and effectiveness of their local environment.

Today, the demand for codeless or light code tools is still very hungry. Those who are expensive professionals who can avoid every punctuation to complete their work, those who are motivated. But so far, the only product we offer them is the VBA macro language before generation and the expensive tools like PowerApps. Only when your business subscribes to a bunch of Microsoft cloud products can you use them..

2. The real power lies in empowering others

If there is any secret to the success of Access, it is: Access is successful because it makes everyone feel powerful.

The role of Access We can also give an example. My partner is tracking a family, student, class and attendance for a small music school. There is no danger that many people will edit the database at the same time, and there is no need to open the data to other platforms. Will a full-featured SQL Server application be better? Yes, I can even do this with the free version of SQL Server Express. However, even if designing such an application is a simple task, it is not the kind of thing that can be done in one day. Moreover, users of such applications do not want to use the same simple method of Access to enhance their love applications with self-built forms and reports.

3. Never overestimate “just use it”

Think about what you need to install a professional database solution. For example, to install the SQL Server Express I just mentioned, you (at least) need to complete the following steps:

  1. Install SQL Sever Express. Make sure that a number of configuration settings are set up so that the database service can start normally.

  2. Download SQL Server Management Studio so you don’t need to use the command line to create a database with SQL commands.

  3. Create databases and tables. (This part is almost as easy as Access!)

  4. Choose a programming language, database library, and development environment. Maybe you will choose something like the Visual Studio Community because it packs these things together.

  5. Write a statement to your database in your code. Depending on the practice, you may write your own code or use a code generation tool like the Entity Framework.

  6. The next step is an interesting start. In order to access the database, you need to grant the correct data permissions to the account that executes your code (usually not your own account). According to my years of teaching other people’s programming experience, this is almost a stumbling block that will cause them to wrestle for programming rookie.

The steps in the above series actually didn’t do anything. Those are just the steps needed to prepare the environment.Compare those with the startup cost of Access. After starting Access and building a database, it’s hard to make it work.

It’s hard to price convenience, but the appeal of something “useful” has made many general techniques become famous overnight.

So, the answer to why Access hasn’t died is simple. It’s because of a seemingly awkward zombie standing in the corner of a party that I would never be invited. Access is for ordinary people. It is true that it encourages bad habits, and it is true that expanding its use is almost certainly a disaster, but it doesn’t matter. As long as no one wants to develop such a tool—a tool that gives ordinary people so much power and reduces complexity to that low level, Access will continue to go so far, even though it’s not creased by its creators. See and acknowledge, but still have its mission. The real question is whether we dare to develop a database that serves everyone to replace it?

Translator: boxi.