Microsoft Access was an attempt to do the same: provide a user interface to a relational database. But it was never as easy to use as Excel, or the other office applications. There are still quite a few MS Access files around in government and legacy corporate datasets, and Ultorg can connect to them.

Back when Ultorg was an academic project, we did a controlled user study comparing Ultorg's visual query interface (then called SIEUFERD) to Microsoft Access' query builder. Using the System Usability Scale, Ultorg's usability was in the 52th percentile (better than 52% of business software), while Microsoft Access was 6th(!) percentile (better than 6% of business software, i.e. worse than 94% of business software). (Source: https://people.csail.mit.edu/ebakke/research/sieuferd_sigmod... )