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Microsoft Access: Empowering the Masses
November 19, 2018

Microsoft Access: Empowering the Masses

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Access

Microsoft Access is a vital tool for people in our organization who have programming needs but do not have the background, the software, or the workstation security settings to use more complex tools such as VB.NET. It is used across the organization by employees such as me, maybe who have had programming experience in the past.

Access is great for a quick fix to a problem that is not too complicated, or for brainstorming and prototyping possible solutions for those problems.
  • Microsoft Access is great at cranking out quick solutions for simple programming problems
  • Once Access has been learned, the same concepts are readily transferable to create more complex VBA macros in Excel, Word, and other Microsoft Office products.
  • It is easy to integrate with most other Windows-based back-end databases such as SQL and Oracle.
  • It can be placed on websites to allow remote users to access the data
  • Sharing an Access database with users of mixed Windows operating systems can lead to data integrity problems.
  • Security is only basic, so for sensitive data, a more robust back-end should be implemented.
  • Files can grow to an ungainly size, so periodic database compaction is necessary. The larger the files grow, naturally performance suffers.
  • It has had a tremendous positive impact because the work in our department simply could not be done without this tool. Group policy, security settings, and other permissions simply do not allow us to pursue more involved programming solutions.
  • It saves us literally days of work every month by the automation it provides, turning what used to be a very manual, very labor-intensive process into a streamlined, more accurate, more efficient way of doing the job.
  • It allows us to help other users in our area who do not have a programming background, showing them how their lives can be made easier with a few lines of code in Microsoft Access, VBA, etc.
Microsoft Access is not as powerful as SQL Server, nor is it as secure. But for applications that do not require complex programming and do not handle sensitive data, it can't be beat. Similarly, Silverlight has it's own strengths, but it is designed more for lightweight web applications. Open source solutions give you other advantages, such as being able to do whatever you want with the source code. However, security and transferring of skill sets are a concern.
Microsoft Access is great for integrating with .NET for both stand-alone and web-based solutions. Since it is so widely-used, it is fairly easy to find people in your existing work pool who can use it, and also easier to find new applicants who can hit the ground running with this technology. It is terrific for small businesses or small departments within larger organizations who want to be in control of their own simple projects and prototyping. It is well-suited for environments where security is locked down but employees still need to accomplish simple programming tasks.