Forum Discussion
Moving Away from MS Access
The organization I work for is wanting to move away from Microsoft Access databases where possible, and we have started exploring what tools our current Access databases could be moved to. Is there ...
Depends what you're trying to accomplish. You shouldn't choose tools first and projects second. Figure out what you need to do, then find the best tool for the job. For example, where I work we have tons of people struggling to manually combine, wrangle, edit, modify, process and otherwise tinker with files from a vast range of business software systems, and they need to mix, match, combine and crunch data from Excel and text files into coherent output (usually Excel files...after all, these are mostly accountants) We have found that the most flexible and efficient tool is MS Access. There isn't much we can't do with creative VBA and SQL, and we use some SQL Server databases for the situations with a lot of data and complex queries. Access also happens to already be installed on all of our employees' computers, so deploying solutions is a cinch. We also don't have a lot of multiuser issues, not is much of the data is ever edited by the users, it's mainly just manipulating data from other sources (PeopleSoft, SAP, mainframe systems, and so on) into forms they can use, or automating long, tedious manual labor.
Of course, you have to determine if that's the kind of thing you need to do. If you have hundreds of people simultaneously entering and editing records, or you need complex pretty reports and graphs or a web-based interface, then you might not want to use MS Access.
Of course, you have to determine if that's the kind of thing you need to do. If you have hundreds of people simultaneously entering and editing records, or you need complex pretty reports and graphs or a web-based interface, then you might not want to use MS Access.