Anybody who has ever used Microsoft Access knows that it’s a very high leverage tool. In a short while you can get basic database functionality, forms and reports up and running quickly. It certainly has its limitations but in some instances it’s just the right solution.
With that background, this post was pretty interesting to skim. The author is thinking in terms of a new product that could be Access on the web. He talks about the fact that the Ruby on Rails framework for creating database applications is close but needs some more.
Dreaming of Rails as the NextAccess
One of the comments is a pointer to dabbledb. I looked at it and it looks very good. I watched the 8 minute demo on the dabbledb site and it seems like it would be a good tool for some of you out there who would like a usable database for various things.
DabbleDB doesn’t talk in terms of Relational DB or anything technical, but has the idea of tables referencing tables. I suspect that I would find it pretty limiting, but there is no arguing that it would be sufficient for a lot of cases.
Dabble DB is a SaaS offering. $8/person/month
I remember programming with the very first version of Access back in the summer of 1992. It was an amazing product back then for how quickly you could get something working in it.
This just speaks to how there is not one solution that is going to be right for every situation.
Indeed dabbledb may be too limiting for many use cases, but for a number of use cases, like quickly creating a simple database without a lot of requirements for granular privileges, it could “just work” and be much less expensive than building a custom Web database solution–or even using a higher leverage framework like CakePHP or Ruby on Rails. The tradeoff is generally that if your needs are particular enough, you may hit certain types of scenarios which the product wasn’t built for and may therefore reach a dead-end. And of course in this particular case the normal cautionary statements about SaaS-type offerings from lesser-known outfits apply.