Re:The two critical shortcomings... (Score 2, Informative)

Check out phpgroupware. It is really amazing. I put up a demo at http://alaya.net/gw It does much more than just group calendaring as well (although many of these functions are not enabled in the demo) I agree with you about the importance of MS Access. It is an excellent tool. In fact I would even argue that the position you describe with respect to Access really also applies to Excel since anyone who really uses Excel heavily is likely to find something essential missing from StarCalc and the other open source spreadsheets. For the reasons above I was highly interested in the Adabas database in the release of StarOffice 5.2 yet I was quickly disappointed with it. And now I don't see it included at all with Openoffice.org 1.0. While we are on the topic there is another application very popular in accounting/finance that again really has no equivalent in open-source: Quickbooks Pro. For me the federal settlement with MS was so disappointing because I was really hoping to see a forced breakup and a new office software company with an interest in making its product work with as many platforms as possible (MS's line about "consumer choice" is complete BS). Funny that this aspect of their business is not looked at in more detail...