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
Oracle APEX
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Oracle APEX (or Oracle Application Express) is an online low-code application builder that allows users to develop a database-drive application, customize the application's UI, and then give their users access to the application via URL. Oracle APEX includes a suite of pre-built productivity applications and examples, such as a Survey Builder, Bug Tracking, P-Track project management, etc
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.
Based on our organization's experience, Oracle APEX is a versatile and powerful tool, but its suitability depends on specific business needs, technical requirements, and the nature of the application being developed. Scenarios where Oracle APEX fits well: Business Process Automation/Workflows Reporting and Dashboards for Data Analytics AI based systems such as Select AI Chatbots for data insights based on LLMs Native-like Mobile Applications using PWA feature of APEX Scenarios where Oracle APEX may be less appropriate: Very Complex and highly interactive applications Use cases based on a non-oracle Database
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.
Can't think of any - the Application Express development team does a fantastic job adopting and supporting emerging trends with each new release.
Requires Oracle RDBMS; i.e., is not portable to other RDBMS platforms. On the surface this may seem like a con but it is as it should be - Oracle database is best RDBMS available and tight integration with Oracle RDBMS promotes creation of reliable performant apps.
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.
I felt very comfortable using Oracle Application Express from the start. I designed my data model and quickly developed the basic CRUD pages for master tables. Then I designed the main functionality and was able to test and deploy it in a couple of days work. I will probably share the app with other members of the team and continue adding some features in the short term.
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.
its easy to use as a developer and applications designed using apex are easy and intuitive to use as an end user. Even non-coders can build good applications, the more code you can write the more you can enhance the application but you can get up and running quickly with almost no technical know how.
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.
Very active and knowledgeable community support includes quick and helpful responses from the Oracle employees on the product development team. I've never had to raise an official support request - everything is dealt with via forums and user groups - or via direct emails. The supposrt commuinty is one of the great things about Apex.
Using it on the cloud is really simple, the entire process of configuring and provisioning an Oracle Database takes only a few minutes (less than 10) and then Oracle APEX is already deployed on the database, so you just have to start using it. I would strongly recommend using APEX on Oracle Cloud Free Tier.
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.
If you are expert in SQL and PLSQL and use Oracle Database, then the best choice is Oracle Application Express. The functionality is already complete and very easy to use, so it's useless to find another tool if you are using Oracle. You don't use Oracle APEX only if: (1) you are using other database than Oracle, and (2) your application load is unpredictable.
In the mid-size organization, we had a BI tool that had a significant license cost involved. With Oracle back-end we were able to switch to APEX and move all reporting at literally zero cost.
For Oracle PL/SQL users the learning curve is very quick and easy, there are ready templates that you can start with and eventually create complex reports.
You can track authorization and authentication on data editing and usage. High performance as it is native oracle sql codes.
Centralized data capturing, makes your datawarehouse writable for lookup tables or reference tables.
