Microsoft Access vs. MySQL vs. Microsoft SQL Server

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.

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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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Microsoft SQL is ubiquitous, while MySQL runs under the hood all over the place. Microsoft SQL is the platform taught in colleges and certification courses and is the one most likely to be used by businesses because it is backed by Microsoft. Its interface is friendly (well, as pleasant as SQL can be) and has been used by so many for so long that resources are freely available if you encounter any issues.

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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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• Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
• Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
• Data Security
• Easy to understand and use
• Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script

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• 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.

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• Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition has a high cost but is the only edition which supports SQL Always On Availability Groups. It would be nice to include this feature in the Standard version.
• Licensing of Microsoft SQL Server is a quite complex matter, it would be good to simplify licensing in the future. For example, per core vs per user CAL licensing, as well as complex licensing scenarios in the Cloud and on Edge locations.
• It would be good to include native tools for converting Oracle, DB2, Postgresql and MySQL/MariaDB databases (schema and data) for import into Microsoft SQL Server.

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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 understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.

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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.

SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.

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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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Its does not have outages.

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SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.

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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.

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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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We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.

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It was good

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very hands on and detailed training

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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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Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.

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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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[Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.

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SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
• Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
• Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.

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