Strength of MSAccess 2007.

[priyamtheone]

Hi, I have a few questions. First of all, what's the flexibility and strength of MSAccess 2007 and how much data and transactions can it support? Second, I would like to know whether it's optimum to use MSAccess 2007 as database for a small banking system, provided it's a real life application and not a demo/tutorial one. The system will have approximately 250-300 customers per year and their daily transactions for the whole year that'll count upto 1,10,000. If MSAccess isn't optimum then which light version DBMS can I use? How about MySQL or something else? Third, is there any light version for MSSQL server that fits into my scenario, for almost all the MSSQL versions I have seen are developer/enterprise editions? Regards Priyamtheone

[Jorgen Andersson]

The strength of MSAccess is that it has a builtin GUI, a small footprint and xcopy deployment. The weakness is that it doesn't scale, I wouldn't recommend it for more than ten concurrent users. I would instead start with either Oracle Express edition or MS SQLServer Express edition. Both are for free, in both cases the biggest limitations are: won't use more than one processor, 1 GB Ram, and max DB size is 4GB. This limits you less than you might think and both options are easy to upgrade.

"When did ignorance become a point of view" - Dilbert

[Mycroft Holmes]

I'm not sure about the 2007 version but Access was NOT a multiuser, it worked OK as a mutliuser DB until it didn't and when you asked for support from MS they would stand on the disclaimer that it is NOT multiuser. Definitely use the Express versions (I use MSSQL but that is because of my skill set) and set up a proper client server environment. MSSQL is reasonably easy to set up and very easy to work with.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH