MS Access Database Substitute...

[Curiosoft]

Hi,

Anyone know of a decent Win32 database substitute for MS access? I want to create a database system to manage customers, but do not want to use MS Access.

The requirements are...
1) Decent interface (low priority)
2) SQL support

Thanks,
Curiosoft

[ghermann]

I'm using Valentina (paradigmasoft (http://www.paradigmasoft.com) )

Big advantage is that you can use it with many language. Today you can use it with c++ and in the future with .Net or Java.

Support is reactive, you can use it on Windows, Mac and soon Linux.

It's very fast, but not sure fully compliant with SQL. Just check on the website or ask a question to customer service.

[Mark Currie]

This one is in beta, and I think it's going to be free when it's done:
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/sql/

I'm going to use MySql personally. It's a very popular database. Here is one of the interface clients:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/query-browser/index.html

[ghermann]

Why not buying a full solution to manage customers ? As in every business, you have to focus on your main source of revenue, especially when you are a small organization. Just calculate how many times it will take to design, develop, fix bugs to get a full solution which works.

At the beginning, I wanted to develop my own software to manage customers. Finally I decided to buy a software. It was a bit expensive at the beginning (300 USD) but now I'm happy because I don't have to add features to software, what I would do certainly now because I'd have forgot a lot of things during the design process.

Question : did you work in a customer service or marketing department in the past. If no, it's difficult to know what information you need to store now and in the future. Trust people who developed such software, they studied everything. Focus on you main business.

[Curiosoft]

Why not buying a full solution to manage customers ? As in every business, you have to focus on your main source of revenue, especially when you are a small organization. Just calculate how many times it will take to design, develop, fix bugs to get a full solution which works.

At the beginning, I wanted to develop my own software to manage customers. Finally I decided to buy a software. It was a bit expensive at the beginning (300 USD) but now I'm happy because I don't have to add features to software, what I would do certainly now because I'd have forgot a lot of things during the design process.

Question : did you work in a customer service or marketing department in the past. If no, it's difficult to know what information you need to store now and in the future. Trust people who developed such software, they studied everything. Focus on you main business.

Yeah,

I definitely agree. I did look at some CRM solutions. My concern stems from the subsciption-style service. I would like to buy the product and then be done with payments.

What product did you buy? Maybe I'll do the same.

Because I need basic stats at the moment, I may do it myself since it doesn't require much coding work.

Later,
Curiosoft