# What's a good database program? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 23, 2005, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169 "2005-05-23T21:43:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/1 "2005-05-23T21:43:39Z")
For running on Win XP, that is… My wife is in the home loan business, and wants to be able to easily track her clients from some good database software; unfortunately, I know nothing about database software. I’ve been doing a bit of research online, and have identified a few programs that might work for her, but not having used them myself, I have a hard time deciding what might be best. She wants to be able to sort clients by various criteria, including names (of course), dates, addresses, loan amounts, loan programs, etc. Does anyone have any recommendations for her? Thanks in advance! ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/2 "2005-05-23T21:44:50Z")
Assuming she’s just keeping the data for her personal use, MS Access is probably good enough. ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/3 "2005-05-23T21:48:11Z")
Yes, I assume that it’s for personal use; meaning that she won’t be sharing the data or networking with it at all. Is Access easy to learn? Also, can you inport/export to and from Excel with Access? (off to do a little research on Access) ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/4 "2005-05-23T21:53:13Z")
Access and Excel play pretty well together, and it’s pretty easy to learn to do basic stuff with it. ---
**Author:** ![redtail23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3e96dc/32.png) [@redtail23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/redtail23)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/5 "2005-05-23T21:57:10Z")
I’ll second MSAccess, especially if you’re wanting to convert from/to Excel. It’s good for beginners doing simple things (lots of wizards & automatic setups). IMO, stay far, far, FAR away from MSWorks, however. It does a little of everything, very poorly. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/6 "2005-05-23T22:03:57Z")
Another vote for access here; you can easily exchange data with other applications and it gives you the possibility of developing front-end forms for your databases - it’s actually possible to write quite respectable, functional and even quite complex small business applications entirely in MS Access (that’s not to say that everybody _respects them_, in fact many database professionals vociferously despise Access - I mention this only to prepare you). ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/7 "2005-05-23T22:09:14Z")
Thanks all! So Access seems to be popular so far… what do you guys think of [FileMaker](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B0001LUH9M/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/103-8566551-8855051?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=software)? Has anyone used it at all, and have any feedback? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/8 "2005-05-23T22:44:07Z")
FileMaker will run circles around Access in ease of use, learning curve, and multi-user capacity, and is cross-platform. And for a non-Microsoft app, it’s reasonably interoperable with Excel (although more so on the Mac platform). Access is probably faster for a single user, where it’s pretty fast (although it scales up really badly), and if (as is unlikely to be the case described here in the OP) there’s much possibility of eventually converting the database solution to run on a SQL Server, you can port (albeit awkwardly) an Access database to SQL, something FileMaker doesn’t do. For creating a database of loan-applicant clients and doing searches and sorts based on dates and status and amounts and locations and names and that kind of thing, FileMaker is so easy she won’t have to crack the user’s manual. Access is harder to learn and modify, and unless you’ve already got Office Professional, i.e., you have to shell out for either one, you’re best off going with FileMaker. This board has many Access users ranging from casual to professional-calibre, which somewhat offsets the learning curve and greater user-hostility of the app compared to FileMaker. I’m admittedly biased, I’m a FileMaker geek for a living, it’s [what I do](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=317672). (That’s not an indicator of its ease of use, that thread, though — don’t fret). ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/9 "2005-05-23T22:49:24Z")
btw, there’s a lot of know-how involved in setting up a good database that’s independent of the application you end up using. Things like normalization, indices, etc. are important and aren’t app-specific. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/10 "2005-05-23T22:55:46Z")
I’ll second that; database design is far more important than platform (notwithstanding that it would be a really bad idea to run a huge company system on a desktop db solution). ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/11 "2005-05-23T23:30:02Z")
Access is pretty standard. For the need you discribe, it should be a decent tool for the job. Some “real” DB programmers scoff at Access as a “toy DB” I will reccomend a book: “Grover Park George on Access” by George Hepworth. He goes into some detail on basid DB design, Which, if done wrong will become very important about the time it will be too painful to fix it. He starts out with an example that sounds pretty much like what your wife needs, so it might be fairly cookbook. The MS Wizards can introduce some landmines, such as allowing spaces in lable names, which will eventually cause trouble (spaces are delimiters by default). Hepworth warns that wizards need fairly advanced users to avoid such pitfalls, which of course runs counter to thier raison d’ entre. ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/12 "2005-05-23T23:34:24Z")
For non microsoft free software I would suggest Firebird as being robust, portable and a good standard SQL implimentation. For one person use Access is fine especially for someone allready used to Excel, but it is only realy good for simple uses and you should ensure the xls file is regularly backed up as Access is not good at keeping data consistent. I don’t know filemaker, but have heard good things about it. I wouldn’t suggest MySQL as its current version is less robust and less standard than Firebird with more room for implimentation errors. Design is at least as important as the database software you use. Read up on simple relational database design. About dot com has a few decent [articles](http://databases.about.com/cs/tutorials/a/accessgup4.htm) or here is a longish explanation of [normalisation](http://www.datamodel.org/) . ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/13 "2005-05-23T23:34:52Z")
Thanks again for the replies, all! Based on the input in this thread so far and what I’ve gleaned from the bit of searching I’ve been doing on the net between work sessions I’ve gotten some good ideas. I’ll run the options past the wife tonight and let her decide… ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2005, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/14 "2005-05-23T23:39:27Z")
Bippy, Your link on normaisation seems to be dead, Sounds like something I should read. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/15 "2005-05-24T00:11:53Z")
I think [this page](http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/intro-to-normalization.html) is a good introduction. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/16 "2005-05-24T02:24:22Z")
Why not just buy software for what you need to do? There is so much software available there really isn’t much reason to re-create the wheel. Here’s a link from the first page of Google for “small business loan software” [http://www.credexsystems.com/Demo.htm](http://www.credexsystems.com/Demo.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/17 "2005-05-24T14:59:13Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > Why not just buy software for what you need to do? Err… that is rather the point! 😉 I’m just trying to find out _what_ to buy that’s going to meet her needs… Off to take a quick look at your link now. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/18 "2005-05-24T15:18:23Z")
> [@Astroboy14](#): > > Err… that is rather the point! 😉 > > I’m just trying to find out _what_ to buy that’s going to meet her needs… > > Off to take a quick look at your link now. I think he’s implying that you should buy customer management/loan software that already has the queries and forms built in. Still basically a GUI database back end, but just does some of the leg work for you. Might be a solution, but 90% of the time those options are more expensive ad require so much customization that you’ll be just as good building an Access Apps that you can scale to your exact needs. Worth doing a little shopping though. One point to consider is that Access has, by far, the largest user community of any of the consumer DB apps. This can be helpful should you ever want someone else to look at and/or consult on it. Plus it’ll make digging up instuctions, tutorials, and online help easier. Just one factor to consider. I use Access at work FAR more than I’d prefer. I’m a delevoper by trade with a pretty strong database background. I did all my learning and early work on enterprise solutions like Oracle, Sybase and SQL Server, which I find _much, much_ more intuitive and easier to use. Access had, for me, a really steep learning curve. The query builders, reports, and macros/modules are simply something I had a lot of trouble changing my thinking to accomodate. I hated this software for a long time. However, it does alot of very useful things for what you’re looking for, moreso than even the heavy weights like SQL Server. SQL Server would probably require a web interface or other application to do your data entry and reporting. Access rolls it all into one. My advice would be to use Access, if you do not have previous experience working with other databases and consider yourself an advanced user of Excel, you’ll probably be in good shape to learn this smoothly. IMHO, it doesn’t lend itself well to just jumpng in and sorting it out yourself however. Some type of structured learning program, be it a step by step book or a class of some type, would be a asset so you understand whats going on from teh top down. This is the biggest issue with all DB programs and DB structures, you cannot operate with a cursory understanding, you’ll cause more trouble and have more frustration than it’s worth. ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/19 "2005-05-24T17:32:06Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > I think he’s implying that you should buy customer management/loan software that already has the queries and forms built in. Still basically a GUI database back end, but just does some of the leg work for you. Might be a solution, but 90% of the time those options are more expensive ad require so much customization that you’ll be just as good building an Access Apps that you can scale to your exact needs. Worth doing a little shopping though. Ah! OK, I got it now… shows how little I know about databases that I misread what **RaftPeople** meant! :smack: I think that **Raft** may be on the right path, too… having discussed it with my wife, it appears Access is not the direction she wants to go (she already uses Access for some other things, so is quite familiar with it). Apparently, she wants something more along the lines of what **Raft** is proposing: something custom-written for the use she has for it, with some scheduling and reminder notifications included as well. I’ll have to do some more Googling now that I have a better idea what she’s looking for. ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169/20 "2005-05-24T17:45:00Z")
> [@Kevbo](#): > > Bippy, > Your link on normaisation seems to be dead, Sounds like something I should read. From the first page choose “Data Modeling Section” from that page choose “Rules of Normalization”. That said much of Normalization is just common sense (don’t hold the same information in two different places, hold information that often repeats in a look up table rather than repeating the info many times in a main table…) and also you can get too into normalization and make a system more complicated than necessity dictates. I agree that buying accounting software may be easier though probably more expensive. A thought does your friend have knowledge os visual basic? If so that is built into MS Access and could make MS Access a natural choice for them. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-a-good-database-program/305169.md?page=2)