Re: MS Access usefulness and size restrictions

Comments interspersed.

"Daniel A. Morgan" wrote

> 1. You know for a fact you will never need to scale your application for
> more data and/or more users.

More than _how much_ data and _how many_ users, Daniel? Reported in the Access newsgroup with some regularity are multi-gigabyte databases and 50-70 users. No knowledgeable Access person is going to recommend an all-Access solution for terabyte databases or hundreds of users. However, they might well recommend Access as the client for a server database in those ranges.

You'd be laughed out of the building by any knowledgeable client if you suggested an Oracle installation for ten, or twenty, or thirty users, unless there were compelling reasons other than the user audience.

> 2. Security is irrelevant.

I caution everyone that someone can crack any security scheme if you let them get their hands on the application/database. That will hold true for server databases, as well, if you let them get control of the server. However, I'd wager a cuppa coffee or other beverage that there are people participating in comp.databases.ms-access who could secure and send you a database that you couldn't crack in any reasonable time for any reasonable amount of money with the available cracking tools. I'd also wager another cuppa, though, that that database, if enough time and effort were applied by knowledgeable parties, could be cracked. It's just another one of those "how much is it worth" judgement calls.

> 3. Your environment is pure Microsoft.

Joe's pointed out one alternative. But, without any "tools", I've run all-Access solutions in environments that were not, repeat _not_, pure Microsoft. Of course, Access and Jet must run in Windows or a Windows simulator, but I've had mutliple users accessing a separate Access tables database that resided on an HP-UX server.

> 4. You don't have a background in stable computing where being BSOD'd
 drives
> your blood pressure up.

Perhaps I don't... I've only been in the business since 1957, and among other things, worked on the system that protected you from Soviet manned bombers, the system that got our folk to the moon, and the one that is likely still involved in over half your credit card transactions. None of those were done in Access, of course, but not every application demands 24/7 ultra-reliability, and certainly not every tool other than Access provides it.

> To me Access is one step above 3x5 cards.

Well, I'll have to say the same to you as to wayne, "I'm sorry for you, my friend." unless of course, you have the smartest deck of 3x5 cards that anyone every imagined.

> The cost of a database application is never
> in the software purchased from the vendor.

Well, that would depend on the application. Some applications are of sufficient scope and magnitude that what you say is true. The vast majority are of a scale where the cost of the software is a consideration.

> It is in the design, implementation, testing, and long-term
> maintenance. Within three years your Access app will be worthless.

That is an interesting statement, considering there are people using daily Access 2.0 applications I developed in 1994 and 1995. I'd have been pleased if they'd run out of steam and had to call me back to upsize, but that just wasn't the case.

> The Oracle app will still be as stable as a rock and capable
> of being migrated to the latest version of the RDBMS in a
> matter of minutes.

Daniel, only a fool would confuse the environments in which to use a client-server solution with Oracle as the back end or an all-Access solution. If you think that is even a possibility, you need to revisit Relational Database 101. If you want to argue "Oracle versus <something>", then you need to choose a server database as the something.

Oracle is certainly an appropriate solution for a large range of problems, often in combinarion with clients prepared in Access. On the other hand, Access (and the supplied Jet engine) is certainly an appropriate solution for a large range of problems. Anyone who doesn't understand that is in the wrong business if they tout themselves as a 'database specialist'.

On the other hand, perhaps you don't acknowledge that anything less than the huge, heavy-duty, industrial-strength, 24/7, ultra-reliable applications are, in fact, "database applications".

Appropriate technology, young friend, appropriate technology. My last time at Boeing, FYI, was in 1959, before I moved on to more fertile fields. Received on Tue Jun 12 2001 - 13:31:47 CDT