Re: MS Access usefulness and size restrictions

At least two of your colleagues from the Oracle newsgroups have demonstrated that they are sadly lacking in knowledge of the broader database subject area. When they stop making false claims about Access in newsgroups that I can see, I'll stop responding to those false claims in the same newsgroups where they made them. In the meanwhile, using the free PowerPoint viewers for both Windows _and Macintosh_ (I don't know if they can be opened using any of the several Windows simulators for Unix), perhaps some others who aren't familiar with the "lower end of the database world" might find the presentations enlightening.

Would you suggest I save those in HTML so they can be more easily read? Would you suggest that I begin with a summary of capabilities of Access in the environment, so that users who aren't Microsoft developers might be able to peruse just the first few pages to see if they had any interest in continuing? I'm always looking for suggestions to make my information more useful/usable.

Access is surprisingly robust for a "little desktop database" (not at all to be equated with "toy"), so much so that Microsoft seems to have found it hindering sales at the lower user-audience end of the SQL Server marketplace. And, as I've pointed out, it can be used to prepare excellent client applications for Oracle, as well as other server databases.

And, certainly, as an Oracle stockholder, I would not be at all inclined to "dis" Oracle. The reason I bought the stock is that I think that it is a great solution for the heavy-duty, industrial-strength database problems that many. but not nearly all, organizations face.

What stirs me to respond is dolts who think Oracle is _necessary_ for any database application that has a half-dozen users, or over a few transactions per hour. By their very association with this excellent product (Oracle), their ignorance taints its reputation.

"Mark Townsend" wrote

> Great - Information about a Microsoft product that's only useful to
> Microsoft developers, prepared for a Microsoft User Group in a format
 that
> can only be opened by a Microsoft product on a Microsoft platform, yet
> strangely (albeit badly) cross posted to Oracle newsgroups.
>
> Please, please, please trim the follow-ups.
Received on Sat Jun 09 2001 - 18:15:33 CDT