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
Valentina
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Valentina is a relational database software solution offered by Paradigma Software.
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.
If you have to manage a lot of different databases from different vendors, you could do well by standardizing on this product. It checks all the boxes for a proper database management studio. You would only have to learn one product to manage them all. However, if you are looking to find a good product for a single database vendor, you might be better off finding a tool that was designed specifically for that vendor product.
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.
Foreign Key Constraint data viewer! This was a tremendously helpful feature that not many other products have. Just pick a constraint and see the data in the child tables! No setup required!
Somewhat laggy performance. Boot up speed was on the slow side and connecting to our database servers was also a little slower than other products.
User interface can be a little clunky. Instead of the usual tree view of servers, databases, and schemas, you are presented with lists that you click on and get new windows to pick the new list of data from. Not organized efficiently.
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.
Compared to Microsoft's SQL Management Studio, Valentina studio was comparable, just harder to get used to in the UI department. It ran slightly slower than other products but did save some time with neat features they baked into the product. However, in using DBeaver Community and DBForge Studio for PostgreSQL from Devart, we found different products that the team ultimately decided to use. DBeaver has all of the features we needed most (minus the constraint data viewer) and a more intuitive UI that we were used to. DBForge Studio for PostgreSQL has a very standard Windows look and feel and lacks some features, like database/table designers, but makes up for those shortcomings in the much easier filtering and sorting options right in the data grids. You can even write a query and edit the data returned, which is something we don't see in many of these tools. Our team ultimately settled on the developers using DBeaver and the support team that needs data viewing/editing capabilities using DBForge Studio.
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.
