Is Access a Low-Code/No-Code Solution?

[NauticalGent]

Daniel Pineault asked this very question on his website today. I left on opinion there and thought it would be a good topic here as well. I realise my opinion is not shared by the vast majority of Access Heavy Weights here at AWF but I am used to being a square peg surrounded by round holes!

 

[NauticalGent]

I have also heard that George Hepworth has invited Michael Aldridge to the December 2nd AUG Access Pacific meeting to discuss the Dataverse connector (in public beta) for Access. Hopefully he accepts, I would love to hear what he has to say in his defense.

 

[CJ_London]

Given low-code/no-code applications tend to have limitations in what can be done, I would argue that an access developer just using wizards is having a no-code experience, one who uses macros instead or as well is experiencing low-code whilst anyone else using VBA is not experiencing low-code or no-code at all.

 

[NauticalGent]

Exactly my thoughts as well. BOTH avenues are available. I left a lengthier comment of DP's website but in summary, it says the same thing.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

There are applications where code is not required and it is perfectly possible to create a viable Access in-home app without a single line of VBA being explicitly generated. For instance, my first in-home Access app was an inventory of some old books I was going to sell. I wasn't going to do any animation or dynamic color changes or special linkages, so I just went ahead and built the DB. Yes, I would say that a no-code solution is possible because I have done one.

The trick, of course, is that such a DB has no bells and whistles. I would say it was a "plain vanilla" DB - but somehow that is an insult to ice cream cones everywhere.

 

[NauticalGent]

The trick, of course, is that such a DB has no bells and whistles.

True enough - but from what I have seen, Power App doenst provide anything better - AND - just like Access, if bells and whistles are waht you want, you can achieve it, WITH CODE.

I would say it was a "plain vanilla" DB - but somehow that is an insult to ice cream cones everywhere.

Not bad!

 

[CJ_London]

Power App doenst provide anything better

agree - but would say powerapps is enabled for web and smartphone which is a good thing (from my perspective) in extending the reach of Access

The move to no-code/low-code a) puts the designing power much further behind the scenes from the developer b) everyone's designs are limited to the functionality provided so intrinsically start to look the same and any hope of having a design USP goes down the toilet and c) feels to me like we are moving back to the old mainframe/dumb terminal concept, particularly with online data storage thrown in - except you don't own the infrastructure and perhaps not even the data.

Ultimately I suspect there will be perhaps 4 or 5 no-code/low-code options for the developer - in much the same way there are limited options for web browsers and search engines.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

To be honest, I heard DB products claiming to be no-code some time ago. For instance, a main-frame app called SmartStar that worked with practically any ODBC-compliant SQL engine. They had a query grid system similar to the Access query grid, and they had report- and form-by-example methods. Worked OK for a long time. I know for a fact they talked to ORACLE, SHAREBASE (which after typical corporate gyrations became SYBASE), SQL Server, and two or three others. They actually DID produce what they claimed they would. The reason I mention it is because of CJ's comment about "dumb terminals." I first encountered SmartStar in the late 1980s when smart terminals and workstations were very rare. Their grid was based on dumb terminal displays. Therefore, the "no-code" solutions have been around for a long time.

 

[gemma-the-husky]

Wow.

I don't believe Access is no code. I actually add loads of defensive code to prevent users (including developers) doing things that are perfectly legal access processes, but which would be ill advised.

I can't imagine how you could produce anything complex without code.

At the moment I am integrating a complicated database with a third party solution that exposes data with a REST API. How would I do that with no code?