Is Access Right Program for Me?

[Campy]

I work for a benefits consulting firm and they want me to find out how to
create a "Total Compensation" statement for our clients. This statement
would include all of the benefits included in this clients employment such
as: medical, dental, long-term care insurance, 401(k), profit sharing, sick
leave hours, etc.
The end result being a statement that we could upload on a secure website
which has graphs and charts as well as columns with $ amounts.
Would Access work for this?

 

[Jack Cannon]

Campy,

Yes. Access will work great for your application. However, Access does
have a steep learning curve that should not be ignored. Access is a
relational database. That means that Access applications usually have a
primary record that describes the client's basic information (Name, Address,
Phone Number, etc.). Then each client record would have some form of a
series of activity records (Purchases, Cases, etc.). Then there could be
additional records such as payments, warrants, appointments etc.

Excel would probably work also. Access is certainly the better choice if
the number of records is large (thousands). However Excel does not have the
steep learning curve. As a general rule I do not advise individuals to just
jump into the design of an Access or any other relational database. That
does not mean that you cannot do it. But I do believe that it will probably
take someone with no relational database design to take longer to produce the
required results.

I personally believe that your firm would be better served to contract or
hire a database professional particularly if the potential number of records
could get into the thousands.

Jack Cannon

 

[John W. Vinson]

The end result being a statement that we could upload on a secure website
which has graphs and charts as well as columns with $ amounts.
Would Access work for this?

With regret (I like Access a lot!) I'd have to say no. It is not sufficiently
secure (2003 and earlier have Workgroup Security, which can be cracked; 2007
doesn't even have that) and it's not suitable for web interaction. There are
lots of canned programs to do this - or you may need to spend the $$$ to get a
SQL/Server backed web application. Good luck.

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

With regret (I like Access a lot!) I'd have to say no. It is not sufficiently
secure (2003 and earlier have Workgroup Security, which can be cracked; 2007
doesn't even have that) and it's not suitable for web interaction. There are
lots of canned programs to do this - or you may need to spend the $$$ to get a
SQL/Server backed web application. Good luck.

Using the free edition of SQL Server could easily make the data secure
enough. No need to spend money on a SQL Server or web app.

The statements could be generated as PDF files, possibly with a
password, and placed on a secure web server which requires logins to
view/download the PDF files.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
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