By Hiran de Silva
Podcast narrated
Christopher T. Fennell recently made the provocative claim that “Power Query replaces Access.”
Many professionals, including myself, Tomasz Zarzycki, Jan Karel Pieterse, and Marcus Syben, responded — not to “correct Christopher” per se, but to protect those who might be misled by what is, at best, a surface-level equivalence.
So let’s take a moment to speculate, respectfully and analytically, on how this conclusion may have come about — and what it reveals about a much larger problem.
1. The Business Context: Excel and Access — But Not Together?
Fennell’s company is called Excel and Access LLC, which suggests a professional history of delivering solutions using both Excel and Access — perhaps in parallel, but not necessarily in integration.
That distinction is important.
- If you’ve built standalone Excel models (without a database backend)…
- And you’ve built Access databases (without Excel as a front-end client)…
- Then you might reasonably view them as two separate environments — each with its own logic, tables, queries, and outputs.
Now imagine you suddenly discover that Power Query inside Excel allows you to:
- Create Tables
- Perform Joins
- Clean and merge data visually
If you haven’t integrated Excel and Access before — and you now see Access-like operations inside Excel — you might naturally conclude:
“Oh! Power Query is doing what Access used to do. Maybe we don’t need Access anymore.”
On the surface, that conclusion appears logical.
But the similarity is cosmetic.
And the inference is misleading — especially for others watching from the sidelines.
2. Tables and Joins ≠ Relational Databases
Let’s get something clear:
- The existence of tables and joins inside Power Query does not make it a relational database.
- The presence of query steps does not make it a robust data infrastructure.
Power Query is, and has always been, a transformation layer — the “T” in ETL.
It pulls data from somewhere (often from… Access!), applies steps, and loads the result into Excel’s memory.
It offers no:
- Persistent storage
- Referential integrity
- User-level security
- Transaction logging
- Multi-user write-back
- Historical versioning
It is, quite literally, a temporary staging area.
Access, on the other hand, is a relational database — albeit a lightweight one — and is designed for persistent, governed, relational data storage.
What Fennell sees as equivalent is simply a shared vocabulary, not a shared architecture.
3. What’s Likely Happening Psychologically
Christopher, like many practitioners who’ve worked on real business problems, has likely:
- Used Access as a local database for small systems
- Used Excel as a flexible reporting or modeling tool
- Worked with clients who don’t always grasp relational thinking
Now, along comes Power Query — a middle ground that “feels” like a simplification of Access.
It lets you:
- Click instead of code
- Visualize steps
- Merge without SQL
For a certain type of user — especially someone familiar with Access’s query design window — this feels like a breakthrough.
And so, a cosmetic similarity (joins and steps) is mistaken for a conceptual replacement.
4. The Bigger Problem: Mis-Education in Public
Again, this isn’t about “correcting” Christopher.
He’s free to interpret what he sees through the lens of his experience.
The real risk is this:
When someone with an established brand and following makes a claim like “Power Query replaces Access,” it will be taken as education — not just an opinion.
And if you’re an Excel user trying to grow professionally, you may not have the background to challenge it. You’ll take it at face value.
You’ll stop learning about relational databases.
You’ll start using Power Query in ways it was never meant to be used.
You’ll build fragile, memory-bound systems that fall apart under audit or scale.
And you’ll think it was Excel’s fault.
5. A Call for Deeper Literacy, Not Shallow Equivalence
The real issue here is conceptual literacy.
It’s not about whether Power Query is “good” or “bad.”
It’s not about defending Access.
It’s not even about the individual who made the claim.
It’s about the need to:
- Understand why relational databases exist
- Understand why ETL tools exist
- Understand that Excel can integrate with Access in powerful, scalable, professional ways — if you design it properly
Power Query is a fantastic teaching tool.
It’s a gateway into relational thinking.
But it is not a destination.
6. Final Thought
We should be encouraging users to move from cosmetic understanding to architectural insight.
- Use Power Query to teach joins
- Use Access (or SQL Server) to teach data normalization
- Use Excel as a client, not a container
- Show how the real power lies in connecting the tools, not pitting them against each other
If we do that, we won’t just avoid Excel Hell —
We’ll unlock Excel’s true role in modern enterprise systems.
Add comment