Good Free Alternative To MS Access [closed]

Question

Consider the need to develop a lightweight desktop DB application on the Microsoft platforms.

It could be done fairly easily with MS Access but I'd like to be able to distribute it to others and I don't want to pay for a runtime license.

Requirements:

• easy distribution to others
• no runtime licensing issues

Considerations and Candidates:

• Base from the OpenOffice suite. My concerns were around its stability.
• MySQL + writing custom DB code in C++ or Python or whatever seems like a rather heavy-handed solution.

Question: What are the low cost or free database alternatives to MS Access?

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See Also: Open Source Reporting Engines

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@Schnapple

Bruceatk kind of hit on what I'm thinking of; it's not so much the DB engine as I want the other niceties that Access brings to the party. The nice form designer, the nice reporting engine etc. But you do raise a very good point about the installation footprint. I had considered that but I've not made any firm decisions about which way I'm going with this yet anyway. It'll probably be something fairly lightweight anyway and a small installation footprint would definitely be a plus.

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@Remou,

No I was unaware that the MS Access 2007 runtime is free; thanks for pointing that out. The last time I'd bothered to investigate it (I don't remember when it was) I think it was a fairly expensive license for the runtime because I think they were trying to sell it to Corporate IT departments.

And thanks to everyone else who responded as well; I was completely unaware of those other options you all pointed out.

Answer 1

for sqlite, check out the firefox extension. It offers a serviceable GUI.

Answer 2

VistaDB is the only alternative if you going to run your website at shared hosting (almost all of them won't let you run your websites under Full Trust mode) and also if you need simple x-copy deployment enabled website.

Answer 3

Check out suneido.

I made a fairly complicated GIS app as an experiment with it some years ago (database, complex gui, reports, client/server). It was a pleasant experience (apart from some documentation issues...) and I became productive with it very fast.

I don't use it anymore mainly because:

• it's not really general purpose
• it's not cross platform (windows only)
• I decided to stop exploring exotic technologies and specialize in something more mainstream.

Answer 4

In the context of a programming forum, we don't usually think of the programmer also needing the application portion of the database. Normally a programmer wants to use their own development environment for the business logic and front end, and just use the store, query, retrieval, and data processing capabilities of the database.

If you really want all those other things, then you're talking about a much larger and more complicated run time environment. You're not going to find anything that's 'lightweight' any more. Even MS Access itself no longer qualifies, because it's hardly light weight. It's just lucky in that a lot of users might already have it, making it appear to be light weight.

This doesn't mean you won't find anything. Just that it's not likely to have the same level of maturity or distribution as Access, especially since the underlying access engine is already baked into Windows.

Answer 5

I'd the same problem of you. I had a MS access application but I wanted to go to a web application accessible to everybody and without paying money to MS. So I decided to use MySql and Wavemaker (open source) to get the scope..I'm very happy of this decision. and that's the result http://www.mara-database.org/

Answer 6

SQLlite,
Firebird,
VistaDB (not free),
and SQL Server Compact Edition (not Express)
all come to mind.

Another thought: while the original question does ask about desktop databases, its likely some people will land here looking for a database to use with a web site. It's important to remember that these are all in-process databases, and as such are rarely if ever appropriate for use on the web. If you want to build a web site, you really need a database server engine, like MS SQL, Postgresql, MySQL, Oracle, or their brethren. At the same time, those server engines are rarely if ever appropriate for a single-user desktop application.