My theory is that InfoPath killed Access. People wanted to use the "easy interface for Nancy in Marketing to submit a purchasing request" and got bogged down with XPath and SharePoint/ActiveDirectory fuckery, and weren't quite to the level where they could grasp MSSQL (or IT had disabled this or that, forcing the one ambitious "computer guy" in Finance to cludge together something with the tools available). Using Access would have been ideal but it was a time when MS was pushing things like InfoPath and Sway and the like, and simultaneously there were issues with concurrency and "omg macro virus" cybersecurity focus. Access got better but it was already tainted.