 <p>One traditional "Microsoft" answer to this is to let them keep using Access... only point it at the SQL server and just let them build their custom queries there.</p> <p>If you want to get fancy, you can build in a query user role and account, grant only read access to it, and even limit that baked-in role user account to some percentage of the total system load with the Resource Governor stuff if necessary.</p> <p>There is no shame in prototyping new stuff in Access before rolling it up into real code, either.</p>