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1. larodi+eX8[view] [source] 2026-02-04 06:13:18
>>deofoo+(OP)
Good, I will with great pleasure now reiterate my point about people now producing their own code, even complex stuff, rather than downloading potentially malicious and foreign code. Which as a tendency threatens ALL clumsy big ERP service providers selling you SAAS.

Go ahead - I'm ready to be down-voted again and again until folks realize it is inevitable, as is inevitable that many companies in the area of business software are going down down down.

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2. lelant+c79[view] [source] 2026-02-04 07:44:47
>>larodi+eX8
> Which as a tendency threatens ALL clumsy big ERP service providers selling you SAAS.

Wait, what?

The big ERP vendors aren't under any threat, the small ones are.

No business is going to switch from a system that has armies of low-paid consultants to in house AI developed system that has effectively zero consultants who can come in and perform the deployment with tested integrations to their accounting system, their 200 suppliers, their customer systems and their 3rd party auditing systems.

But, small businesses who were not going with a 12m contract for 5 consultants, and who dont have any need for integrations to suppliers, customers and 3rd party systems can do their own systems.

It sounds like you are very far removed from ERP and business systems in general.

All magnetic coding is going to do is further entrench existing large systems because new systems, whether AI generated or not, will be too numerous for any one of them to gain traction.

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3. RobinL+fb9[view] [source] 2026-02-04 08:16:15
>>lelant+c79
My wife's old company, a fairly significant engineering consultancy, ran it's entire time/job management and invoicing system from a company wide, custom developed Microsoft Access app called 'Time'.

It was developed by a single guy in the IT department and she liked it.

About 5 years ago the company was acquired, and they had to move to their COTS 'enterprise' system (Maconomy).

All staff from the old company had to do a week long (!) training course in how to use this and she hates it.

In future I think there will be more things like 'Time' (though presumably not MS Access based!)

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4. spockz+dc9[view] [source] 2026-02-04 08:24:08
>>RobinL+fb9
I still think MS Access was awesome. In the small companies I worked it was used successfully by moderately tech savvy directors and support employees to manage ERP, license generation, invoices, etc.

The most heard gripe was the concurrent access to the database file but I think that was solved by backing the forms by accessing anything over odbc.

It looked terrible but also was highly functional.

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5. RobinL+6d9[view] [source] 2026-02-04 08:30:02
>>spockz+dc9
Agreed! The first piece of software I built was a simple inventory and sales management system, around 2000. I was 16 and it was just about my first experience programming.

It was for school, and I recently found the write up and was surprised how well the system worked.

Ever since I've marvelled at how easy it was to build something highly functional that could incorporate complex business logic, and wished there was a more modern equivalent.

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6. spockz+ai9[view] [source] 2026-02-04 09:08:35
>>RobinL+6d9
Maybe a combination of AirTable and PowerBI/open-source alternative? Or just ms access backed by a proper database?
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7. jon-wo+9q9[view] [source] 2026-02-04 10:10:38
>>spockz+ai9
Grist[1] is great for this stuff, at first glance its a spreadsheet but that spreadsheet is backed by a SQLite database and you can put an actual UI on top of it without leaving the tool, or you can write full blown plugins in Javascript and HTML if you need to go further than that.

[1] https://www.getgrist.com/

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8. virapt+ew9[view] [source] 2026-02-04 10:58:35
>>jon-wo+9q9
Just another yay for Grist here! I've been looking for an Access alternative for quite a while and nothing really comes close. You can try hacking it together with various BI tools, but nothing really feels as accessible as the original Access. While it's not a 1:1 mapping and the graphical report building is not really there, you can still achieve what you need. It's like Access 2.0 to me.
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