Discussion Board 1 ITCO331-1003B-01 Relational Database Management Systems July 25, 2010 Some of the advantages of MS Access are that the style of it is familiar to most users. You can enforce discipline when entering data through the data entry forms. All kinds of rules to make sure you enter the right kind of data can be implemented. Connectivity options are a strong asset; Access databases can connect to Excel tables, ODBC connectors, SQL Servers, and SharePoint Services sites for live data. Tables created in these sources can be linked and used for generating reports.
These reports then give you a better view/analysis of your data. Data harvesting from a large number of e-mail addresses is possible too. Access has been designed for desktop use, more like a personal database. It can support multiple users over a workgroup alright; the total number of users (usually around 50 or so simultaneous) is small however. That means Access is more useful for individual departments or the SMB (small and medium business sectors). Access also has difficulty dealing with databases larger than 2GB in size, though just to be safe one should limit usage to about 1GB.
Advantages of the MS SQL Server are SQL Server already powers the world’s largest customers in every industry. SQL Server is designed to meet industry benchmarks and scales to meet the most demanding needs of the largest enterprises. Customers running SQL Server 2008 report excellent experiences with the latest scalability enhancements. ISV Partners in all industries trust the SQL Server platform to run the most demanding applications. More ISVs support SQL Server than Oracle database.
