Access was first released in 1992 and by 1995 it was widely used in small business settings. It was remarkable in its ability to bring together relational database tools with other Microsoft Office products, including Word and Excel. Through the query builder and the straight-forward Visual-Basic programming language it made database features accessible to a whole new level of less-technical users.
Unfortunately, many people had bad experiences with larger databases slowing down and ultimately becoming corrupt. The underlying JET database engine wasn’t up to the task. As a result many turned away from Microsoft Access and began to embrace other, more glitzy solutions like web interfaces to SQL back-ends through VB6, ASP, ASP.NET, Java, or even PHP. The Jet MDB file which helped launch a database revolution was now little more than a toy for trivial projects or amateurs.
Microsoft Access provided a number of key advancements that still haven’t been well matched for other platforms:
- Easy table design and linking
- Easy query setup for non-programmers
- Easy and rapid form development, even for non-programmers
- Straight-forward reporting without having to compile
- Rapid design and deployment
The big problem was that to make these features actually useful in a multi-user production environment one would have to handle the size and speed limits.
Microsoft soon released the Access Data Project (ADP) feature which closely linked the Access best features with Microsoft’s SQL Server back-end, providing the speed and power to handle large databases with corruption. Unfortunately, this ability came too late for many businesses that had already launched web-based front ends for the database needs.
Today, the ADP provides a strong combination of the strengths of Microsoft SQL server and the rapid development and end-user accessibility of Microsoft Access. What’s more, the Access environment provides powerful Visual Basic hooks into the other Microsoft Office products, including Word and Excel, as well as a friendly environment for non-programmers to get at their data.
In some cases, the reduced costs in code maintenance and development mean that a Java, PHP, or ASP application can be re-released as an Access ADP with a pay-off period of less than a year. Unless you require web-based access for remote users, this can mean substantial savings.