FOSS alternatives to an MS-Access-based organizational software solution

[Shlomi Fish]

On Monday 06 December 2010 21:14:42 Uri Even-Chen wrote:
> Hi Eyal,
> 
> 1. I'm a programmer with about 10 years experience in MS Access and
> Visual Basic, and also some experience with MySQL.  If you are looking
> for a programmer I might be able to do the job for you.
> 
> 2. I think MySQL is usually the preferred open source database, if you
> don't like Access you might want to switch to MySQL.
> 

Maybe MySQL is the most popular open-source database, but:

1. It has a problematic license - the GPL - including for its client library.

2. It has been the subject of a lot of criticism. See:

http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/mysql/

3. The recent merger of MySQL by Sun, followed by the merger of Sun by Oracle 
puts a lot of uncertainty into its future.

----------

Therefore, I would recommend against it. PotgreSQL is a networked alternative 
which is fully BSDLed, and SQLite 3 is a public-domain file-based solution. 
There's also Firebird, which I had less experience with.

> 3. From my experience, programming in Access is easy and many things
> can be done quickly, with much more effort to do the same things in
> other programming languages.
> 
> 4. MySQL is commonly used with PHP.  However you can also consider
> using Java, maybe also GWT.  There are other programming options, I'm
> new to Java so I don't know a lot about them.  But I know someone who
> knows, you might want to hire him as a consultor. If you want his
> name, write to me and I will send it to you.
> 

There are many languages that can interact with SQL databases beside PHP and 
Java: Perl, Python, Ruby, Lua, Haskell, .NET/Mono, C/C++/Vala, etc. etc.

> Good luck!
> 
> Uri Even-Chen
> Mobile Phone: +972-50-9007559
> E-mail: uri at speedy.net
> Website: http://www.speedy.net/
> 


Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Stop Using MSIE - http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/

<rindolf> She's a hot chick. But she smokes.
<go|dfish> She can smoke as long as she's smokin'.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .