This is both a clever hack and a brilliant solution. But it also worries me a bit. Mostly because I've seen a lot of Visual Basic + MS Access solutions. They work fine on a single computer, but they you put a database on a network share to be able to share it between a few computers and the performance is often horrendous. If you're doing a lot of data processing it's often best to do it as close to the data as possible.
But as always, it's seldom the tools, but the right tool used for the wrong usecase that is the problem.
But as always, it's seldom the tools, but the right tool used for the wrong usecase that is the problem.