Re: Oracle V MS-Access

Tom Kelsall wrote:
>
> Hello, everyone.
>
> My company are negotiating a deal, in competition with another company,
> which involves writing a database application. My company want to use
> Oracle, the competitor want to use MS-Access. I would be grateful if
> any professionals here who have experience of both could give me a few
> bullet points, with brief explanations, which give legitimate backing
> to my company's position: does Access have limits which Oracle
> doesn't? Does Oracle offer greater functionality? My company rep
> needs to convince the customer who will be the end user of the
> application - so nothing in depth or too techy or arcane, please.
>
> Thanks very much indeed - I look forward to your reply.
>
> --
> Tom Kelsall HND MCP
> "Integer vitae scelerisque purus"
> (Quintus Horatius Flaccus - Odes)
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.

The biggest issue is scalability. MSAccess is fine for a relatively small database that is access from a few workstations, but if there are a large number of workstations and the database itself is large then Oracle is a much better solution.

The other big argument is with backups. With MSAccess I don't think there is a reliable hot-backup scheme that can be used if the database must be available 24x7. With Oracle it is extremely simple and if the server has enough horsepower the users won't even know that the backup is happening.

If you are trying to come in cheaper then the company that is proposing MSAccess then that isn't likely to happen unless your company eats some of the cost in hopes of gaining future business. On the other hand you can just sit back and laugh when they take the MSAccess route because you can be assurred that somewhere down the road they will be unhappy with the response times and maintainability of the application.

On the other hand, if you are trying to bid an Oracle approach and your sales people are not equipped to give a presentation to show the merits of Oracle over Access then you are already in a losing battle because the customer will only see the price tag and won't have any reasonable basis for chosing a more expensive approach when you cannot demonstrate that it will be better than the Access route. Received on Fri Mar 24 2000 - 09:56:13 CST