Microsoft Access vs. MySQL vs. Oracle SQL Developer

As a Material Purchasing/Planning/inventory tracking application, Microsoft Access serves its purpose well. It's presentation is clean, data entry is simple and the ability to customize search fields is welcome. It does, however, come with some caveats; namely, when setting search filters and the need arises to back up a step or two, with Microsoft Access you have to reset, or "clear all", adding extra steps/time to a query.

Incentivized

MySQL is best suited for applications on platform like high-traffic content-driven websites, small-scale web apps, data warehouses which regards light analytical workloads. However its less suited for areas like enterprise data warehouse, OLAP cubes, large-scale reporting, applications requiring flexible or semi-structured data like event logging systems, product configurations, dynamic forms.

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Almost all development activities (the tool is called "SQL Developer", not "DBA Toolset") can be done easily and quick with [Oracle] SQL Developer. From data model creation (tables, views) to development (creation of procedures, functions, packages) and then testing (SQL Developer includes an easy to use debugger), all tasks can be performed in a single tool.

It may not be as complete as other solutions for DBA tasks like instance monitoring, but it is usually OK for development and testing environments if you want to do some basic troubleshooting.

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• 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!

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• Stable - it just runs, with minimal downtime or errors
• Fast - well-structured data is quickly written and read
• Secure - MySQL is easy to keep data secure from people and applications that shouldn't see it
• Easy to use - SQL is industry standard so no problems with adding, editing and reading data stored in MySQL

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• Object Browser in SQL Developer allows you to explore the contents of your database using the connection tree.
• The SQL Worksheet is an editor that allows for execution of SQL statements, scripts, and PL/SQL anonymous blocks. SELECT statements can be executed to return results in a spreadsheet-like 'grid' or can be executed as a script such to emulate SQL*Plus behavior and output
• DBA Console allows users with administrative privileges to access DBA features such as database init file configuration, RMAN backup, storage, etc.

Incentivized

• 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.

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• Learning curve: is big. Newbies will face problems in understanding the platform initially. However, with plenty of online resources, one can easily find solutions to problems and learn on the go.
• Backup and restore: MySQL is not very seamless. Although the data is never ruptured or missed, the process involved is not very much user-friendly. Maybe, a new command-line interface for only the backup-restore functionality shall be set up again to make this very important step much easier to perform and maintain.

Incentivized

• Inability to run multiple queries on the same database. You can only run one query on a given database.
• Analytical models created from complex tables isn't accurate, and needs work.
• Inability to view multiple tables of a database side-by-side. When trying to find correlations between tables, it would help to be able to see them at once on the same page.

Incentivized

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.

For teaching Databases and SQL, I would definitely continue to use MySQL. It provides a good, solid foundation to learn about databases. Also to learn about the SQL language and how it works with the creation, insertion, deletion, updating, and manipulation of data, tables, and databases. This SQL language is a foundation and can be used to learn many other database related concepts.

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We had already thought of changing to TOAD, but we decided to stick with Oracle SQL Developer until the end.

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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.

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I give MySQL a 9/10 overall because I really like it but I feel like there are a lot of tech people who would hate it if I gave it a 10/10. I've never had any problems with it or reached any of its limitations but I know a few people who have so I can't give it a 10/10 based on those complaints.

Oracle SQL Developer is very easy to use and there are a wide range of courses available which can help you get started just within a day. Data can be exported in multiple formats based on user requirements. Organizational data can be stored and management effectively using Oracle SQL Developer. All the data, tables, sequences, indexes can be easily created and updated in Oracle SQL Developer.

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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.

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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.

Incentivized

We have never contacted MySQL enterprise support team for any issues related to MySQL. This is because we have been using primarily the MySQL Server community edition and have been using the MySQL support forums for any questions and practical guidance that we needed before and during the technical implementations. Overall, the support community has been very helpful and allowed us to make the most out of the community edition.

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Large user community support

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there is no key idea, since it is easy to implement Microsoft Access

1. Estimate your data size. 2. Test, test, and test.

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Just download and uncompress!

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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.

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MongoDB has a dynamic schema for how data is stored in 'documents' whereas MySQL is more structured with tables, columns, and rows. MongoDB was built for high availability whereas MySQL can be a challenge when it comes to replication of the data and making everything redundant in the event of a DR or outage.

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I have started to use Toad for Oracle recently because it is easier to sort and filter results, due to their memory sort feature that puts the results from your query in memory so that you don't have to rerun your query. I have used SQL Developer to easily update records in tables that I need to fix. I haven't found an easy way to do this in Toad other than writing SQL insert statements.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• As it is an open source solution through community solution, we can use it in a multitude of projects without cost license
• The acquisition by Oracle makes you need to contract support for the enterprise version
• If you have knowledge about oracle databases, you can get more out of the enterprise version

Incentivized

• It gives 100% return on investment as it is free of cost.
• No need to have multiple tools for each database
• Considering the employee training, so one can save money on training, as it is not very hard to use so still savings.

Incentivized