Migrate from Access 2010 / VBA

[Michael Torrie]

On 11/22/2012 08:19 PM, kgard wrote:
> I am the lone developer of db apps at a company of 350+ employees.
> Everything is done in MS Access 2010 and VBA. I'm frustrated with the
> limitations of this platform and have been considering switching to
> Python. I've been experimenting with the language for a year or so,
> and feel comfortable with the basics.

Python is just a language, just like VBA itself is just a language.  You
can't just replace an MS Access VBA app with one in Python.  You have to
replace your *tools* with open source alternatives, that hopefully
python can glue together.  Wolfgang provided a nice list of such tools.

One program that claims to be working towards Access replacement is
Kexi.  It's not written in Python, but I think it does use Python as a
scripting language, just as Access uses VBA.  I doubt it's anywhere near
Access yet, but it's worth a look:

http://kexi-project.org/about.html


> <snip>
> Has anyone here made this transition successfully? If so, could you
> pass along your suggestions about how to do this as quickly and
> painlessly as possible?

It will not be painless at all.  There is no "transition" path, really.
 That's partly the result of Microsoft product lock-in, partly because
you want to replace a complete system that happens to be glued together
with, simply, "Python."

I think Python could be a great fit if you could find the right tools to
go with it, but it's not going to be easy at all.  Complete MS Access
replacements is one of the may extremely weak spots in the open source
world.  Partly because web-based apps often work better than a desktop
DB solution, and you might want to go there too, perhaps using a python
web development toolkit like django.