Looking for direction, preferably Open Source Option, to replace 20+ yr old MS ACCESS Apps

[BJZeak]

Hello ... I'm looking for some direction/help/suggestions to find an economical all in one Front End Form builder with similar features to MS ACCESS for use in building front end user interfaces for SQL back ends ... ultimately looking to replace/migrate some aging MS Access Apps built over the past 20+ years ... apps currently saved in 2003 mdb format but running on various MS OSs (2000, XP, 7, 10) with Access Licenses for 2003 and 2016 ... these apps have a maximum of 7 concurrent connections with expectations of no more then 100K records ... while the record and user counts are low (which is why Access is still a good fit) the Form/Subform/ChildForm Complexities aren't trivial

My Top 10 wish list of features:
1) FREE or One Time Standalone License Fee < $500 (no Cloud based ties like office 365)
2) provide MS ACCESS/Windows native like Controls; Text, Labels, Picture objects, List and Combo Boxes, Subforms, Group Options, Tabs, Scroll bars, buttons, etc. with the ability to dynamically enable/hide/lock/layer/resize/move any or all of these controls
3) be Event driven
4) be able to set/use Timers
5) be able to access the OS API for manipulating files/devices
6) capability to have user defined functions
7) abilities to dynamically configure forms based on user inputs
8) provide VBA like IDE
9) provide VBA like Integrated Debug
10) Ultimately/Ideally a solution independent of OS/HW changes would be welcome

With 45 years of coding experience in Dbase, FoxPro, Access and OpenEdge 4GL under my belt, still struggling to find an open source, all in one, solution to provide an MS ACCESS like VBA and FORM Builder capable of being a front end user interface for SQL back end dbs

Although MS has been providing free variations of Express and VS for several years, I am reluctant to go down that path due to what I can only describe as MS H/W and O/S update related backward incompatibilities ... in hindsight made a mistake of building a critical process monitor with VB 6 for use in NT/W2K which had to be completely rewritten in Express for use in XP, then required major revisions in VS for use in Win 7 and then yet again in VS for use in Win 10

The MS ACCESS Apps I am currently being asked to look at migrating are a myriad of shared menu driven forms and child forms with dynamic linked and overlayed subforms sharing data on a PEER to PEER configured Intranet (DATA_BE is located on one PEER with apps running on several OS based machines)

Migrating MS Access Data to SQL is fairly straight forward using any of the following configurations:
1) Unix based OS on a physical machine with some SQL Server variant
2) Unix based OS in a VM with a SQL Server variant
3) XAMPP or MAMP equivalent systems for Windows running Apache and MY SQL Servers

Already using ODBC connections with all 3 variations above to existing Access Apps along with sharing data using dump/export and reload/Import both ways

The struggle is finding a User Interface (FRONT END) ... everytime I go searching for solutions online, the glossy ads and feature rich descriptions just take me down deep dark rabbit holes

Hoping someone can share and or point me to some current knowledge base that might help me with this quest

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide

 

[Bersani]

Try PHPRunner from Xlinesoft. I made the transition from Visual Foxpro to MySQL/PHP with PHPRunner. It lets you design web based applications in record time.

 

[BJZeak]

Thanks Bersani ... looks interesting ... and in principle appears to meet the definition of an "Access" alternative ... in context of what I described, and reading between the lines, my expectation was that an "App Builder" (< $500 one time cost) would build Apps that could be run from any number of machines/devices (much like apps from a Website Server) with no additional licensing.

In reading the PHPRunner Licensing, they talk about each instance/PC that runs a PHPRunner App requiring a license ... while this is no different from the Access license model, it would potentially add to the cost of any transitioning considerably. PHPRunner indicates it has the ability to create WEB BASED APPS. Does this licensing mean Web Apps will only be usable if PHPRunner is installed on the Client? Can you please clarify?

 

[spamjim]

I'm completely unfamiliar with PHPRunner but it appears to be a visual tool to craft PHP that runs from a web server...so your licensing cost is only for the developer to put software on that web server. There shouldn't be a licensing cost for end users to access the database forms through their web browser.

The web server could be freely licensed (Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP)...aka LAMP (linux) or WAMP (windows).

If you want to be completely free, you could develop with any text editor in PHP/HTML. PHPRunner appears to be better visual interface to PHP and MySQL.