Re: Oracle vs Access

In article <35CFF981.4E18_at_hospvd.ch>, Emmanuel Baechler <ebaechle_at_hospvd.ch> writes:

> All the people who tried to build large information systems
> with ACCESS here failed miserably.

You failed to mention that they also failed to do their homework first. Anyone who launches off building a "large information system" without understanding the limitation of their tools should not be in the business of building large information systems (to put it charitably). As one of my former colleagues at the company from which I retired so succintly put it, "You've gotta know what you're doing."

> Someone created a several GB datamart, and it is in a so
> miserable condition, that it will require a total reconstruction, based
> on an ORACLE database.

Several, in my understanding, means 3 or more. Thus, it must have been at least three Access databases, because Access limit for a single MDB file is 1GB.

Both types of application you mention can be expected to require a Server database, though not necessarily Oracle. Anyone who does not realize that Access is a file-server database, intended for both single users and for "few user" multiuser applications is likely to be out of their depth using anything to develop large or "datamart" applications.

However, nothing you've said warrants the conclusion you (and your colleagues?) seem to have drawn:

> In our experience, ACCESS is only tolerable for small single user, non
> critical applications.

Access is perfectly adequate for multi-user applications, within its limitations. As Detective Harry Callahan, as played by Clint Eastwood, so succintly put it, "A man's got to know his limitations."

Access is also a very good, quite stable client application for even the heaviest-duty, industrial-strength server databases. I've worked on an Access 2 client to an Informix database which has been successfully filling its business mission for several years. I've also used Access as a client to Sybase SQL Anywhere and both Sybase and MS SQL Servers. Received on Tue Aug 11 1998 - 00:00:00 CEST