Thanks for the response, let me clarify a bit.

There is indeed a DBA (two), who handle the things in microsoft SQL server. They are often making cubes, running reports, and making queries for people. But while they do SQL they do not have as much experience with making applications, and are not that proficient in C# and such languages. They are working in SQL server directly.

The application is so other users in the company (say the financial department or marketing) who do not have SQL experience can look into some things themselves, at a lower level than the cubes would provide. It's to work as a front end to SQL Server.

The C# application they use now gives the users dropdowns and options that they can search for, and it then creates the query, but it isn't doing this efficiently, which is a major problem since some of the data tables are so large. Without the ability to support the application, they can't really fix it.

While I could probably look into that myself, they don't want to rely on something that they don't have the resources to support. That's why they were hoping to use Access or some other program that could do what they want to do. So as I said it would need to be easy to use for those who don't know SQL and would make sure the queries are efficient. Access seemed like a good bet since it's so easy to set up and use, but I'm just worried about the optimization of queries from there. And you seem to also think that could be a problem.

So is there an option either A. an open-source program that would serve the purpose and also be smart about the queries without the user actually having to know SQL, or B. some sort of way of creating this that is much easier to learn than C# and thus could be possibly supported.