[pphysch]

How is it conceptually different? RDBMS ORM-based web frameworks (with built-in Admin GUIs) ate the web-oriented crowd, and the rest are happy managing their data in Excel. That doesn't leave much room for MS Access.

[dgxyz]

Try building a complex report or even a printable invoice output in Rails or Django.

[pphysch]

I assure you generating PDFs is not something that Microsoft has a moat around.