General

[Varne]

Hi!

How MS Access compares with SQL, Oracle and SAP. One in my workplace told me
Access is not suitable for large companies using their own servers, intranet
and requires multiuser capability. Is it true? Also if I learn Access well
will it help learning SQL database quickly?

Thanks.

 

[Stefan Hoffmann]

hi Varne,

How MS Access compares with SQL, Oracle and SAP. One in my workplace told me
Access is not suitable for large companies using their own servers, intranet
and requires multiuser capability. Is it true?

To answer the question first: No, normally this is not true. A lot of
large companies use Access applications, I've developed some for e.g. a
German car maker and for a big insurance company.

The real answer: It depends on the needs of your company and the
abilities and knowledge of your IT departement to integrate it into the
IT infrastructure.

Access is a great RAD tool and a RDBMS (the Jet engine). For example,
the application I've made for the car maker uses an Oracle backend to
store the data. The insurance company uses a Jet backend (*.mdb file).
When it comes down to any kind of Office integration, you can really
develop and deploy a solution very quickly.
You can also use Access as a RDBMS only and use VB(.Net), C# or Borland
Delphi to create your frontend.

Also if I learn Access well will it help learning SQL database quickly?

Of course, it will as Jet SQL uses some ANSI SQL. Database theory -
especially normalization - is the same for all (relational) databases.


mfG
--> stefan <--

 

[Rick Brandt]

Hi!

How MS Access compares with SQL, Oracle and SAP. One in my workplace
told me Access is not suitable for large companies using their own
servers, intranet and requires multiuser capability. Is it true? Also if
I learn Access well will it help learning SQL database quickly?

Thanks.

This is not an apples to apples comparison. Those other products you
mention are database engines only. Access is a database application
development platform used to create a user interface to a database.

By default Access is set up to use the built-in Jet database engine, but
you can also use Access to build applications that use any of the
aforementioned server database engines as well.

So the *proper* question is "How does *Jet* compare to SQL, Oracle,
etc..?". Access as the tool to build the interface is NOT part of that
question. For building the interface you would be asking "How does
Access compare to VB, dot-net, Java, etc..?".

Now, concerning the question "How does Jet compare to..." it is true that
as database size, number of concurrent users, and security requirements
get above a certain threshold then Jet is not a good choice and a server
database should be used. As it pertains to Multi-User on a local LAN the
limits for Jet depend greatly on the database and the application used to
interface with it. Some can accommodate 50 to 100 users without a
problem while others could struggle with more than just a handful of
users.

It is certainly not true that you cannot use an Access/Jet solution in a
multi-user scenario. One does have to know what they are doing though.
In a single user app you can get away with a ton of sloppy/incorrect
design aspects, but these cause problems when multiple users are
involved.

That is how Access/Jet got its bad reputation for multi-user situations.
A novice builds an app mostly using the wizards and over time tries to
make a whole department or company run off of it. That is a recipe for
failure. A competent developer though could build that same Access/Jet
app with no problems at all until/unless the requirements really do
exceed what is practical for a Jet database. At that point the Access
interface could still be used after migrating the database to a more
robust server engine.

 

[Varne]

Rick!

That is brilliant! Brilliant!

Thank You.
M Varnendra

 

[Tom Wickerath]

I work for a Fortune 100 Company. We have lots of multiuser Access
applications that work just fine on a LAN (Local Area Network). As long as
you don't attempt to use an Access/JET application over a WAN (Wide Area
Network), and you follow good design principles, you should be fine.

Implementing a Successful Multiuser Access/JET Application
http://www.accessmvp.com/TWickerath/articles/multiuser.htm


Tom Wickerath
Microsoft Access MVP
http://www.accessmvp.com/TWickerath/
http://www.access.qbuilt.com/html/expert_contributors.html
__________________________________________

 

[zolko]

Hi!

How MS Access compares with SQL, Oracle and SAP. One in my workplace told
me
Access is not suitable for large companies using their own servers,
intranet
and requires multiuser capability. Is it true? Also if I learn Access well
will it help learning SQL database quickly?

Thanks.