It's been years, no decades, since I used Office on a PC. Missing from Office on Macs is MS Access.
The last stable and functional version of Access I used was Access '97. The later versions I attempted to use were unstable, losing foreign key definitions being the most obvious problem. Back then, I was certain Access needed to be rewritten from the ground up to remove all the underlying hack code that made it unstable.
Is Access a dead-end product for MS? It's offered only on PC versions of Office. From my perspective, it's the only desktop level database that has reasonable functionality. No other product has a reasonable relational db back end, and a nicely integrated front end. Claris is awful from every vantage point: functionality, cost, value.
The result of no viable fully functional integrated desktop DBMS is we're relegated to using spreadsheets which isn't the same thing at all.
I used that version to interface between mainframe applications and databases, Excel Spreadsheets and Access screens and its database effectively.
But, the root of the system was the mainframe databases that insured data security and integrity. The spreadsheets and Access added considerably to functionality and user efficiency and control -- but I never trusted them to be the core of the system. There were just too many possible points of failure.
Would be nice if Microsoft would think about actually including functionality to review and check formula in Excel for Mac. It’s been in planning for years. Microsoft simply don’t care about Mac users. I couldn’t care less about dark mode I just want to be able to check 3 lines of formula. This is a basic piece of functionality that’s part of Excel but not if you run a Mac.
In case any of you need to develop applications using a solid relational database back-end and a low-code front-end, I can highly recommend Oracle APEX, aka APplication EXpress. You can experiment with various free tiers hosted by Oracle and others. If you really want to have everything on your own PC or Mac then download Oracle XE as it comes with it.
Can you imagine no monthly cost for Adobe Suite? That would be $9000 for the whole suite.
Or, just buy the pieces you need, when you need them. I use just a couple parts of Office or the Adobe Suite, and they last me yeeeaaaars. The cost of the one or two modules spread out over that duration is less than paying rent on them each & every month for the rest of my life.
I like Panic's approach -- buy the version you want when you want it, get support for a year, and keep it as-is after. If you want new features or new support, renew it at a discount. Rented software is not the only solution.
I don’t think Office has had any useful new features in at least a decade!
It's been years, no decades, since I used Office on a PC. Missing from Office on Macs is MS Access.
The last stable and functional version of Access I used was Access '97. The later versions I attempted to use were unstable, losing foreign key definitions being the most obvious problem. Back then, I was certain Access needed to be rewritten from the ground up to remove all the underlying hack code that made it unstable.
Is Access a dead-end product for MS? It's offered only on PC versions of Office. From my perspective, it's the only desktop level database that has reasonable functionality. No other product has a reasonable relational db back end, and a nicely integrated front end. Claris is awful from every vantage point: functionality, cost, value.
The result of no viable fully functional integrated desktop DBMS is we're relegated to using spreadsheets which isn't the same thing at all.
I used that version to interface between mainframe applications and databases, Excel Spreadsheets and Access screens and its database effectively.
But, the root of the system was the mainframe databases that insured data security and integrity. The spreadsheets and Access added considerably to functionality and user efficiency and control -- but I never trusted them to be the core of the system. There were just too many possible points of failure.
Would be nice if Microsoft would think about actually including functionality to review and check formula in Excel for Mac. It’s been in planning for years. Microsoft simply don’t care about Mac users. I couldn’t care less about dark mode I just want to be able to check 3 lines of formula. This is a basic piece of functionality that’s part of Excel but not if you run a Mac.
In case any of you need to develop applications using a solid relational database back-end and a low-code front-end, I can highly recommend Oracle APEX, aka APplication EXpress. You can experiment with various free tiers hosted by Oracle and others. If you really want to have everything on your own PC or Mac then download Oracle XE as it comes with it.
4D is the first fully relational database on the Mac with a Mac UI development kit plus a programming language to create sophisticated standalone database Apps, It’s very intuitive to use from simple drawing interface for creating tables, relations and designing the user interface. It can be a front end to a mainframe DBMS.
There is the powerful mySQL which is what Apple uses for its data in its Apps ( eg. Apple Mail, Contacts etc.). It’s free open source.
In my early use of Access, it was an abomination compared to 4D as far as consistency across modules. It was designed by various teams that used different paradigms in different parts of development.
4D is much more consistent and offers many options for standalone Apps or use on the web.
If you are an SQL programmer, you can use MySQL and Apple Developer Kit to create any level of sophistication in Apps that can sync with iCloud and mainframes and is able to integrate with MySQL on any platform.
And of course the aforementioned Oracle which was out before 4D but didn’t have the Mac UI for development; I imagine it’s much improved since I used it in 1987 when it came on 12 to 20 floppies.
Access is a last place choice on my list of tools to use.
For certain databases, FileMaker can give ACCESS a run for its money. It has been used in Enterprize database development.
The alternatives to ACCESS are all cross platform.
Comments