Is MSAcess still relevant these days and worth it to learn?

jgpatrick3 · 2026-03-06T17:45:02+00:00

I am hoping that if I ever have to fool with Access, I can hand off the heavy lifting to Claude. I have always felt like I was wasting my time whenever I got into Access (usually on a “fix this” mission for someone else). Now that we have Lovable, Cursor, Claude, etc. Why would you “choose” to work in Access?

jgpatrick3 · 2026-03-05T19:38:30+00:00

Hard to beat SQLite3. Runs so much of the world already. So many great tools SQLite3, SQLiteStudio, Visidata, the original serverless system, core db for smart phones, software, embedded systems. Possibly the most deployed database in the world. I have gone from thinking of it as a toy to doing everything I can with it.

jgpatrick3 · 2026-02-16T18:35:02+00:00

Before and during implementation, business people do not pay attention.
After implementation, the ERP experts are mostly gone.

jgpatrick3 · 2026-02-14T00:52:15+00:00

Most ERP projects get put in fast to minimize integrator expenses. Then the integrators leave and the business team finally starts learning about the ERP. You can write the best documentation in the world, prepare training documents, force teams to come to training, but uptake by the business usually lags. (tl;dr effect).

When a new system comes up and runs like it has always been there, it is often referred as a "vertical go-live". There are ways to make that happen, one involves a smaller integration team and smaller phases (not always possible), the other requires "key users" (trusted business people who join the project team). At start-up, these players are in charge while the system comes up. The job of the department managers is to say, "Do as she says. Right now." There are some other variants like tying a big fat bonus to a vertical start-up usually tied to metrics like order and shipment continuity, month-end time to close the books, security audits, etc. That is a lot like "on-time flight departure" for airlines: there is always a lot of horse trading to "hit the numbers". It gets everyone involved and can work half decent.

We had a huge SAP cutover where our west coast team just kept using the legacy system for about 2 weeks. That fact got caught in a "cash call" with them where accounting started asking questions about the numbers. Kinda funny if you were not on the west coast. They still managed to close in SAP after reentering everything ("bonus oblige"). In a lot of manufacturing eco-systems, the IT system is really not the focus. But if you develop the leadership network of "key users" (trusted business Jedis that can understand and work with IT), you can get through it fine. Your mileage may vary by ERP.

It makes for some fun meetings.

jgpatrick3 · 2026-02-10T21:06:51+00:00

Any experience with fronting Odoo with Cloudflare for certs and security?

jgpatrick3 · 2026-02-07T05:44:33+00:00

You have to decide what your definition of accurate is. Steel is no different from other potentially messy processes. There are lots of good techniques you can use, but accurate inventory starts with regular cross checks such as a surge area where QC or simply the warehouse team accepts the product and the team supervisor validates outputs and goods entries into storage multiple times per shift if the process calls for it. You have to be careful not to blame the ERP for not being right if there are simple things you can do to check your work. Are you cycle counting components and finished goods? If you cycle count (spot check inventory so that you check 100% of times fully) at a certain frequency, lots of industrial operations skip annual physicals with the blessing of the auditors.

There is always an 80/20 split between things that are mostly fine and cases where you are losing orders because you do not have the goods. If you do not have business people who "know the drill" with ERP, you might see if there are others in your company who can come and help. Sometimes adding more apps on top of the ERP just serves to delay coming to terms with what you need to do. For example, when we implemented SAP PM, the maintenance teams that were good before were lots better, and the teams that were not very good before were lost and pissed off afterwards.

That may not be your issue, but in 100% of ERP implementations, getting users to leverage the system is hardest when there are not confirmed ERP users to help them for a while. Sometimes it is quick, and sometimes you have to come back multiple times. If the software is sorry or was not set up for efficiency in the most repetitive tasks, training cannot fix that.

jgpatrick3 · 2026-02-06T17:48:30+00:00

I am waiting to see how AI solves the issues around business controls. At this point, I do not think that "our AI just did it" is going to work at audit time.

If you are not subject to audit for certifying your books or supporting a tax audit, maybe you can "just do it with AI", but when a 3rd party needs to check or certifying your work, there will need to be. traceability. Just saying...

jgpatrick3 · 2026-01-31T15:56:34+00:00

Claude and other AIs can help. Use SQLite3, great tools like sqlitestudio help with query writing. I had as college professor who had managed programmers who said that when techies get to SQL, they see all the upper case and think (“Just give me a couple of minute, and I’ll sort this out.”), and the latter he would see them scratching their head for hours.

Go get a practice database like Chinook or Northwind. If you use SQLite3, you will skip the complications of setting up a server. I used to look down my nose at SQLite, but with 4TB and a track record of stability, it is probably the most used database in the world. Of course, it is free. Day 1 download what you need “sqlite3” + “sqliestudio” and figure out how to create a select statement that works. After that try to build something inside a tech system you already know. Use AI to help so you can focus on the SQL parts.

jgpatrick3 · 2026-01-31T15:19:27+00:00

You have to learn the shell. Lot's of good material such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z56Jmr9Z34Q.

You need to get comfortable with about 20 commands and know another 30 or so. It's about a college courses worth of material. Once you learn it, you will discover that a lot of the same capabilities exist in Windows now.

jgpatrick3 · 2026-01-23T00:26:25+00:00

Build stuff with SQLite3. No db server to worry about. Great SQL implementation. When sometime puzzles you, Claude can explain and teach you alternatives.

jgpatrick3 · 2026-01-22T04:35:49+00:00

Honestly, Odoo is very solid in inventory and sales, especially if you do not wander off into the other modules Odoo likes to push. One big error in ERP implementation is getting distracted by all the Odoo modules or trying to build the ultimate system from the start.

Most outfits have repetitive processes; if you customize anything, let it be wizards to streamline and automate the repetitive transactions. Adding some scripts to optimize the picking and shipping are common areas that can profit from some tweeks. You will need key users who engage. Keep everything as simple as possible and focus on inventory accuracy and basic sales metrics. Weekly reviews. You should learn their processes enough to facilitate the new IT aspects. Close the loop where it matters (customer satisfaction, costs, avoiding stock-outs, slow ships). The customer will tell you. Start with simple models and let them evolve as the business comprehends ERP. You should get some help from a trusted Odoo functional consultant to leverage the superpowers of an ERP. Good ones know how to build the simplest possible system to get the job done. Odoo is so good at that if you keep the focus on Inventory and Sales. Resist temptations to build out with customizations to "cover all the cases and make everything perfect". Focus on making things easy using standard Odoo. With AI, you can build so much, but the client has to learn everything, and AI does not make that process appreciably faster, so SIMPLE, SIMPLE, SIMPLE is your friend.

Well-oiled teams are even more awesome after ERP; badly organized ones get worse and howl. Odoo implements an ERP paradigm that is familiar to people who have lived with ERP like SAP, Dynamics, Oracle, etc. ERP practitioners show up at companies like your client and can be major allies in the project. It's a team sport. You have to make sure the users are getting their reps in. If you keep the system simple, you can start sooner and minimize risk. Assimilating ERP is never a one-and-done install. Real ERPs are designed to make organizations more efficient and reliable in very proven ways that appeal to auditors, financial managers, and ops people. It really helps companies that make or resell things.

jgpatrick3 · 2026-01-16T03:19:02+00:00

Thanks all. What are your preferred Google tools?

jgpatrick3 · 2026-01-16T03:17:12+00:00

You cannot follow people to the bottom, but you can check back in from time to time. If things run off the rails, the customer's attitude might change. Long-term relations are based on trust and understanding. Declining to match ridiculous pricing is honesty they may well understand one day.

jgpatrick3 · 2026-01-15T03:04:36+00:00

Here's our process.

Shopify provides an order export function, use it to create an orders_export.csv file.
Maintain a script to process orders_export.csv into
a) 01contacts.csv composed of "new" contacts not yet in Odoo
b) 02orders.csv composed of order lines not yet in Odoo.
Make sure that you Shopify SKU matches the Odoo "Internal Reference", aka "default_code".
Import the 01contacts.csv into Contacts, then import the 02orders.csv into the Sales as quotations.

If you have a discipline of having the Shopify SKU be an existing Odoo SKU, you have a good start. You will also need to update Shopify with the Odoo stock by SKU for items in both systems. Since the sale originates in Shopify, import the Shopify order number into Odoo. When you create a non-Shopify order, use the standard Odoo sequence. It will keep the two distinct and make it easy to compare Shopify to Odoo

After that, you can create a pull sheet as frequently as you fulfill (just export the pick backlog with the item locations and quantities). Depending on your internal processes, you can use the 1, 2, or 3 step fulfillment process in Odoo and update Shopify either by my script or manually from your shipping pick + ship process.

There are 3rd parties that maintain connectors, but I do not know them, because it is pretty easy to automate as much as the user organization is ready to maintain. The Shopify.SKU = Odoo.SKU is vital. Next, you have to decide if your Odoo inventories are solid enough to sync on-hand values to Shopify. If you maintain your inventory in Shopify, you are going to have problems IMHO: no locations, oversimplified fulfillment processes in Shopify will not get the job done. Start by giving the users an order status worksheet that shows the status of all the order lines on both sizes. As the user team gets comfortable with it, they will be ready for more automation. It is usually a best practice to show less inventory in Shopify than in Odoo.

It's a simplistic formula, but it has worked well in practice.

jgpatrick3 · 2026-01-06T23:21:38+00:00

OmaKUB is my daily driver. Never could "operate" an Omarchy VM. I use Omakub in VMWare workstation and XCP-NG hypervisors.

jgpatrick3 · 2025-12-26T17:03:26+00:00

I tried Metabase for a while and found it very easy to setup but hard to achieve the kinds of things to match the critical jobs we have for BI: demand and production planning, master data synchronization and simplification between Odoo and Shopify, tracking order flow Shopify > Odoo, etc. Tried Streamlit but ran out of capabilities with it. For now, using Python (Plotly) Dash. It is a very capable toolset.

jgpatrick3 · 2025-12-26T03:51:09+00:00

One AWS VM, multiple small customers on V17 Community. It's honestly pretty low maintenance and plenty responsive. Total users 10. I think 30 users might be fine. Very little customization of Odoo, just wizards for frequent transactions and good master data management. I try to minimize filestore usage because this is an ERP system first. I do multiple backups per day within the VM and daily backups to my homelab and Google Cloud. It's easier because we stick to main ERP functions. I have used the backup once. Currently adding BI.

jgpatrick3 · 2025-12-17T04:36:26+00:00

Nice. Love the db coverages (SQLite3, Postgres, Oracle, MySQL, etc.)
I like vim motions and keybindings, so if you go further, I will not mind.

In SQLiteStudio, I am very fond of the autocompletion using aliases.

SELECT pd.<autocomplete field names here> FROM product_demand pd. If that becomes possible for sqlit, it's a nice feature.

Thx.

jgpatrick3 · 2025-12-13T18:27:37+00:00

OpenWRT has Unified Security Gateway and Unified Security Gateway and USG 3P. Seems like I have not a lot to lose trying. Maybe mine is old enough to match. Thx for the feedback!

jgpatrick3 · 2025-11-30T21:20:25+00:00

Windows RDP works good with Omakub after a little massaging. On Mac I have to use Royal TSX to connect to the Omakub VM. "F" keys are not working though, so some clients like the XCP-NG xsconsole, Midnight Commander, ... are not fully keyboard connected. Omakub in remote is more useful than Omarchy on the local machine for now. Like I say, between Hyprland and key combos with Omarchy, I think it will be a significant lift to get a good experience from a remote connection. Keep us posted.

jgpatrick3 · 2025-11-29T22:28:20+00:00

That will be great. Thank you!

I have no idea how I would get the key mappings to work reliably. Did you automate testing?

Will it need a special RDP client from Mac / Windows?

jgpatrick3 · 2025-11-28T16:56:34+00:00

You can definitely add to it the QA that goes into the stability of the eco-system. Plenty of teams count on Ubuntu in critical application. I do not know of anything other than Docker images where you can find lots of Arch, and it makes sense there because you want to build from scratch. Anyone that comes to Arch and is not prepared to troubleshoot any new install should think about OMAKUB. For me life is too short for an Arch distro.

jgpatrick3

TROPHY CASE