Microsoft Access vs. SAP Data Services

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

It's definitely one of the leading ETL tools, and it's the best ETL tool to use with SAP integration. If you use SAP HANA, then you should think about Data Services as your primary ETL tool.

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

• Integration with SAP ERP/ECC works really well.
• A lot of flexibility in data creation, with different types of communication capabilities like BAPIs, IDocs, and Batch input.
• Reliable and consistent results and easily enforceable data templates.

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.

Incentivized

• Debugging is not very easy. When one wants to see the flow of data from one Query to another, the process is not very smooth and efficient.
• A lot of functions do not behave the way they should. I have faced problems with the count() function.
• I have faced problems while loading Excel files. The same set of options will work in one case but not in the other.

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.

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 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

As other SAP products, there is excellent support by SAP on this tool. You can access the SAP Help portal in order to give support either from the huge community or directly from SAP.

Incentivized

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

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

You cannot afford to run your business on questionable data. With SAP® Data Services software, you can access, transform, and connect data to fuel your critical business processes. Together, these enterprise-class solutions enable data integration and data quality, providing the right level of insight across your business so you can make better decisions and operate more effectively.SAP Data Services was previously known as SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, SAP BusinessObjects Data Integrator, BusinessObjects Data Integrator.

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

• Very positive impact in jobs maintenance since support auto-documentation.
• Great impact on learning curve.
• Great results in our Data Quality Projects.

Incentivized