Ask Slashdot: easy alternative to MS Access for an easy-to-use DB for a charity?

danzvash writes: I'm doing some volunteering for a street kids charity in Senegal, West Africa, and they need a new database to store all their information for the kids, and to help the funding organisations like UNICEF. The charity staff have a few computers running Windows 7. Being a die-hard OSS geek I'm more inclined to knock up a MySQL backend with a Django (or similar) frontend and run the whole thing from a reliable VPS. But it needs to be understandable by the non-geeks in the charity — there is no IT expertise here. Is there anything that can allow me to design and edit databases, tables, and forms but doesn't require an MS license?

Yes there are plenty that don't require MS

[NemoinSpace]

But if you can't use google, or if you really haven't heard of Libre Office Base, Then MS Office is for you.

Maybe I can help

[darren0c]

I hope this doesn't get lost among the rest of the comments. Hi, I'm Darren. I built a website at darrencaldwellwebdesign.ca (the area I'm referencing can be found under portfolio->web development) but I'm also a student right now and I wanted to help out the other students so I made darrencaldwellwebdesign.ca/school It explains how to setup your own apache server really easily (if you copy/paste the code it also installs webmin and that has a super easy interface for making databases). I also have artic

Drupal

[Ice Station Zebra]

http://www.drupal.org/ [drupal.org] is a good choice.

MARS

[ghinckley68]

MS Access has a free runtime. MS does not advertize but google it youll find it. also be sure to run the split db wizzard so you can delpoly it a multiuser app.

iHRIS in Senegal

[litlfred]

I don't know what information you want to track, but iHRIS: http://www.ihris.org/ [ihris.org] has been adopted to track individual information in many business domains. If you are looking at aggregate level data (no individual specific information), you should think about DHIS2: http://www.dhis2.org/ [dhis2.org] which is also deployed in Senegal. You should also be in touch with Jokkolabs: http://jokkolabs.net/en [jokkolabs.net] They are an open-source friendly incubator / iLab based in Senegal. Cheers, -carl Carl Leitner cleitner@intr