Microsoft Access vs. MySQL vs. QuestionPro

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.

Incentivized

QuestionPro is great for forced-choice and Likert-scale data, and it easily turns raw data into readable statistics. The simple interface lacks attractiveness but is easy to learn and use, even for members outside the digital age. QuestionPro is less effective for qualitative data and short answer responses in large quantities. Reporting and analytic features leave this information in the bulky design, clogging the report and preventing cohesive presentation of the data.

Incentivized

• 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!

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• Before choosing QuestionPro, we evaluated it and Qualtrics, SurveyGizmo, and SurveyMonkey. A committee tested each of 141 key features on all four products. QuestionPro did well in the comparison and we have ended up using even more features that we tested. The summary of that work can be found here: https://oit.utk.edu/research/documentation/qualtrics-to-questionpro/.
• The way it handles anonymous surveys is particularly good. With most products, you have to remember to check the "anonymous" box to prevent it from saving email addresses or other identifiable data. But if you forget to do so, you can't tell by taking the survey. Question pro uses "Respondent Anonymity Assurance" that must be turned on by the company (a quick request from the chat window will suffice) and then it can never be turned off. This activates a link that appears on the bottom left-hand of each survey page. Clicking it takes the survey participant to a company page which assures them that the anonymous feature is indeed turned on.
• It has a very nice combination of great power and ease of use.
• The support we have received from the company has been excellent. Our team has worked with around 30 research software vendors for over 35 years and this company stands out as being extremely responsive to our needs. We told them we needed a migration tool to help us move from Qualtrics to QuestionPro and they created one in just a few weeks. They've added or improved a number of other features for us, at no charge.

• 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.

Incentivized

• 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

• The current user interface for designing and editing questions is truly awful. A big step backwards from earlier user interfaces which were great.
• Customer support is not very helpful.
• Results of survey are not exported in a way that is easy to translate into R data frame.

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.

Incentivized

It's a fine product, but it's also a very competitive field, so it wouldn't take much to knock QuestionPro from top tier status. I would like to see more functionality in all programs, so whichever program does that first is likely to get my money in the next round of budgeting.

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.

Incentivized

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.

QuestionPro is very easy to use. There are lots of question types and drag and drop functionality. There are lots of ways that make the platform easy to use

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

They offer email, chat, and phone support. I have used the chat support several times. Response time was fast, but the rep did not always have the answer. Inquiries are answered quickly and thoroughly.

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

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

Incentivized

Try every feature and test take your surveys multiple times, running through different scenarios.

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

First of all, QuestionPro has powerful futures when we compare it with others. I am not sure but somehow interface of the product is always important for some more than its functionality. QuestionPro has many features, functionality and has a great interface. It is easy to use and a software that is easy to understand.

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

• QuestionPro is being used to automate surveys that were previously done by hand. We would not have been able to do this without the anonymous tracking feature. It has cut turnaround of reports by more than half.
• This is of course more efficient, but this could be expected of any software that automates a survey for you.