[dhimes]

I think you are right. For soft applications, Excel is a powerful enough database that non-programmers can use. Anything Excel can't do can be done 'easily' by mysql.

I know that I've sat down to learn access (and later LibreOffice Base) but by the time I start into it I just think "there's really no advantage to using this over just mysql and a web page front end" and stop learning.

[blowski]

I'd say that the "new Access" is WordPress or Drupal. They're often used in much the same way - create a bunch of entity types that automatically connect with forms and views.