On Nov 26, 11:21 am, Michael Torrie <torr...@gmail.com> wrote: > 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. > >
I understand your comment about replacing tools. Since things tend to fall apart at the seams, though, I wouldn't mind keeping the seams to a minumum. That's why I had been thinking about something like Django or Web2Py. Web2Py seems to more correctly represent MVC, and I like that its template scripting mirrors Python syntal. Thanks for your reply. I will now cower at my keyboard and await my "Django kicks Web2Py's butt" lashing. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list