Not in my experience; those were all real cases I mentioned, with real people using combinations of Excel, Access, and SMB shares to "simulate" having actual software talking to an actual database. Usually, in fact, right beside the actual software that talks to an actual database--because someone figured they'd throw something together to hold "an item or two of ancillary data" instead of getting that software modified to include that data--and then their ancillary data-store grew and grew...