Likelihood to Recommend Exasol is suited to applications requiring fewer & larger queries (reporting/data analytics/business intelligence tools). Its per-query overhead makes it unsuitable as an operational database (those are optimized for many & smaller queries.)
Read full review Microsoft Access can be easily implemented with training. It doesn't require expert level skill for basic reporting functions - but can be scaled to a complex database with sophisticated users. Its appropriate to consider if excel needs to be used to create reports, or if there are data entry needs - with corresponding reports.
Read full review Pros We have found Exasol to be very fast at summarizing large data sets. It has been a great backend for both reporting tools and data analytics/business intelligence. Combined with the fact that data import is also very fast it makes it ideal for a real-time ELT architecture. Exasol is low maintenance. No indexes to maintain (The database auto-manages them) and very little tuning is required. Query processing is optimized for high throughput and high parallelization. This means that even under high loads performance degrades gracefully as opposed to having "pile-ups" and "meltdowns". This has made it a very reliable database for us. Read full review Very easy to create entity-relationship diagrams for various tables and designing mock layouts. Really easy to navigate as it hold[s] the classic Microsoft UI. Another good thing is that it comes with the complete MS Office Suite. It is really fast when joining multiple tables no matter what type of join. Works on pretty much same SQL scripts so no need to learn a new language! Read full review Cons Exasol doesn't have some of the advanced enterprise-y features found in some other large corporate database systems (e.g. native row-level and column-level security). However it's pretty customizable (SQL pre-processing, virtual schemas, powerful user-defined-function frameworks) so many of these features can be implemented manually. Read full review Microsoft Access has not really changed at all for several years. It might be nice to see some upgrades and changes. The help info is often not helpful. Need more tutorials for Microsoft Access to show how to do specific things. Be careful naming objects such as tables, forms, etc. Names that are too long can get cut off in dialog boxes to choose a table, form, report, etc. So, I wish they would have resizable dialog boxes to allow you to see objects with long names. I wish it could show me objects that are not in use in the database for current queries, tables, reports, forms, and macros. That way unused objects can be deleted without worrying about losing a report or query because you deleted the underlying object. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability I gave it 9/10 instead of 10/10 only because it lacks in a few advanced enterprise features that require manual workarounds. Otherwise our users have had no problem getting up to speed with it (other than SQL syntax issues that are specific to it, but that's true of any DB)
Read full review 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.
Read full review Reliability and Availability I don't think the program has ever failed me. It is one of those programs where there is always a solution if you know where to look.
Read full review Support Rating I have had only positive experiences with their support. They are fast, knowledgeable, and courteous. Online support requests get picked up within hours. I've only once had to use their hotline and that was for an emergency. There was even one minor non-security bug report that I reported and which they fixed in the following week's minor release. I was quite impressed.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating there is no key idea, since it is easy to implement Microsoft Access
Read full review Alternatives Considered We looked at some others too, but was 5 yrs ago so I don't recall the list. Exasol had the best performance per cost, outstanding performance, and was easy to evaluate. Even their community addition running on my laptop was faster than our existing reporting solution.
Read full review Crystal is easier for report writing, but isn't a database solution.
Salesforce is lovely, but much more expensive than an old copy of Microsoft Office. For a small budget, [Microsoft] Access was really the only viable option. I only wish it was easier to write complex reports.
Read full review Return on Investment When we first migrated to Exasol (from a MySQL-backed reporting tool) our clients spent over an order of magnitude less time waiting on reports and since then it has opened up possibilities for reporting and analyzing data that were simply not possible beforehand. Read full review Not having to recreate queries or reports every time you want to use them. Once an item is created and saved as part of the database, you save manpower by not having to recreate them. ROI from a usability standpoint is great. Solid product with great functionality that requires low maintenance usually. Read full review ScreenShots