We've seen the same phenomenon in word processing/desktop publishing. We've mostly seen people coalesce around Microsoft Word and its online counterpart/competitors or go full-on desktop publishing with InDesign. People have mostly moved away from lightweight desktop publishing programs for newsletters and the like.

Is SQLite a "scalable, real, full-blown database"? That's the scale that Access is going for. (Though it also totally works as a pure frontend to a "real" database connection.)

SQLite can be used to help build a "scalable, real, full-blown database" application. JET, the SQLite-like engine used by Access, could theoretically be used in the same way.

But the topic here is about GUIs which serve the middle-ground between the "scalable, real, full-blown database" applications and the lowly spreadsheet. The SQLite project offers nothing that is comparable to Access.

Access had the capability to use a full-blown SQL Server back end, while retaining 90% of the flexibility on the front end. For example, adding a column in Access would add a column in the database table!

We can have our cake and eat it too.

The mistake with Access was that instead of keeping a deathgrip on its legacy file-based roots, it ought to have "grown up" and become a web-native HTML5 app that uses SQL Server back-ends as the only option.

I still think there's a huge market for something like this.

Airtable does this, no? There’s just no SQL part. But they got the UI part down.

I’m so annoyed there’s no SQL API for Airtable… even if it was read only.

There were two problems with Access - it looked too complicated and it looked ugly.

It is still available even in the 365 package but I can't remember when I used it last time. It was long time ago.