Microsoft Access is a database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools.
$139.99
per PC
MonetDB
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
MonetDB is an open source column-oriented relational database management system issued and supported by the Dutch MonetDB development team.
Having worked at startups, I can say Microsoft Access is most suited for their needs. Some of the reasons for that can be the ease and ability to create tables, design an entity-relationship diagram, define the relationship between different tables, feeding data into the tables, and retrieving data. All of this can be curated very easily into a process for small to medium-size enterprises. But a serious limitation can be observed where Access does not provide better features for large-scale companies. Another limitation is for companies where Mac is used as work computers.
I think for what we use it for, mainly scheduling, forecast and to compare against payroll, it works well. I think there are some other things that could be added to it to use, like more expansive ways to use the forecasting tool and an easier way to pull previous data from prior years. This would help making the forecast for scheduling in the future.
One good aspect of Microsoft Access is how the software can be customized for different applications. This is very useful because we are able to use this software for multiple applications, which makes it cost-friendly.
Another strong point of Microsoft Access is the skill required to customize, the amount of programming required is less than most other database programs. This is good for a beginner looking to get into database management.
Microsoft Access is one of the more cost-friendly database applications, and most of the time it comes with Microsoft Office. Other database programs can be expensive and not as easy to use.
This is an open source software so there are obvious drawbacks, the biggest of which is a lack of documentation.
MonetDB does not seem to be well known outside of the academic environment so there is less information when you are searching for answers of any type.
I'd like to see more use cases and/or best practices so that commercial companies like ours can optimally use all of its highly performant features.
The code is written in C/C++ and this can be negative if you are a mainly java-shop and need UDF - User Defined Function.
I and the rest of my team will renew our Microsoft Access in the future because we use and maintain many different applications and databases created using Microsoft Access so we will need to maintain them in the future. Additionally, it is a standard at our place of work so it is at $0 cost to us to use. Another reason for renewing Microsoft Access is that we just don' t have the resources needed to extend into a network of users so we need to remain a single-desktop application at this time.
Microsoft Access is easy to use. It is compatible with spreadsheets. It is a very good data management tool. There is scope to save a large amount of data in one place. For using this database, one does not need much training, can be shared among multiple users. This database has to sort and filtering features which seem to be very useful.
While I have never contacted Microsoft directly for product support, for some reason there's a real prejudice against MS Access among most IT support professionals. They are usually discouraging when it comes to using MS Access. Most of this is due to their lack of understanding of MS Access and how it can improve one's productivity. If Microsoft invested more resources towards enhancing and promoting the use of MS Access then maybe things would be different.
Excel is a fantastic - robust application that can do so much so easily. Its easy to train and understand. However - excel does not provide a reporting function and that is typically where we will suggest a move to [Microsoft] Access. [Microsoft] Access requires a little more knowledge of data manipulation.
There is a plethora of choices when it comes to NoSQL and columnar based databases. We use not one but sometimes 2 or 3 of them to carry out a specific purpose. We chose MonetDB because our engineering team enjoys working with open source software and appreciates its simplicity although becoming familiar with it did take time. I would not deploy MonetDB to production but it's a great backup option.
Microsoft Access has had a mostly positive impact on our business objectives in that most of our work is funded by grants and those grants need reports with data about our projects. Microsoft Access makes getting and organizing that data very easy.
Another positive is that since it is built on an Excel backbone, Excel files can be easily imported into Microsoft Access and also it is easy to export Microsoft Access reports, data sheets, etc. into Excel and some other programs as well. That might help more people who already use Excel learn how to work in a database.
I can't really think of a negative impact other than not many people at my workplace have ever used or understand how to use a database. Most people tend to use Excel rather than a database, like Microsoft Access.
If you are familiar with a general database concept and played with open source products before then MonetDB will give you immediate return in terms of productivity since developers can quickly develop and verify their test cases involving back-end database with a large sample data set.
There is a stiff learning curve due to lack of documentation and sparse information available on the internet.
Overall experience has been positive since MonetDB gives you another option when it comes to building out a data warehouse.
