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Re: MS Access usefulness and size restrictions

From: Daniel A. Morgan <Daniel.Morgan_at_attws.com>
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 21:21:58 GMT
Message-ID: <3B2664D4.99AD3EFC@attws.com>

Larry Linson wrote:

> 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.

Assuming what you say is correct, perhaps you can explain why it is the Fortune 500 companies such as Boeing and AT&T spend hundreds of millions of dollars migrating software from Access and SQL Server on Windows to Oracle and DB/2 on UNIX and never the other way around. And amazingly enough ... always due to user complaints which stop after the migration.

Must be a bunch of really dumb end-users huh?

Daniel A. Morgan Received on Sat Jul 21 2001 - 16:21:58 CDT

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