Question: seeking a free alternative to Microsoft Access

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We are passing on a question from a library person, and a couple of potential suggestions. If you have other suggestions, please share them in the comments!

“We are looking for a free alternative to Microsoft Access. We have looked at Base which is part of LibreOffice and OpenOffice. However, as far as we can determine, Base does not allow us to import a CSV file into the database as a table. Such a feature would be important to us as we frequently need to import text files.

We would like to be able to query the database using SQL.

Microsoft Access supports Visual Basic Application. We would like a database that works with C#, Java or JavaScript in the same way, but I realize this may be expecting too much.

I would appreciate any advice.”

I’ll suggest Gnumeric. https://portableapps.com/apps/office/gnumeric_portable

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A quick test showed this method to work:

https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Importing_and_Exporting_Data_in_Base

I used OpenOffice but it worked for that as well.  I don’t know how well it would work if you have big csv files though.

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I think OpenOffice’s Base will do what you want:

“Base delivers native support drivers for a variety of multi-user database engines: MySQL, Adabas D, MS Access and PostgreSQL. In addition, support for JDBC and ODBC standard drivers allows you to connect to virtually any database.”

https://www.openoffice.org/product/base.html

“How To: Import CSV into Base Table”
https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=37013

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