When Microsoft decided to enter the
database arena some two decades ago, Corporate Technology participated
in Beta testing its unannounced database management system.
We were not impressed. Our feedback to Microsoft indicated
that their product was not yet ready to compete with competitors
like Paradox, FoxPro and RBASE, which we were using extensively
at the time. To Microsoft's credit, they never released their
database product. When, a few years later, Microsoft introduced
Access 2, as it was called, we thought that it was an improvement.
But still, we did not recommend it to our clients. It was
not yet robust enough for serious development.
With the introduction of Access 97,
we began serious applications development for some of our corporate
clients. Access 2000 combines the best of all worlds: ease of
use for novice users and serious applications development tools for
the developer. Access 2002, 2003 and later Access 2007 have added many
improvements, especially for developers.
Access is still falsely maligned by
early testers as being slow or not permitting extensive simultaneous
usage. We strongly disagree. Access 2000, for example, is reliable and
fast. Ditto for Access 2003. Simultaneous access to the database is very efficient
and even simultaneous updates and entries (which former versions
could not handle well) are performed by Access on par with any PC
based DBMS.
We have no problem working with SQL Server. We've been
working with SQL since the mid-80's. It's just that most
applications don't really require it.
Many of our web-based applications
use Access 2003 or Access 2007 and you will note that our sites
considerably outperform their
competition on the web. With proper planning and good
programming, Access is easily capable of 20 or more simultaneous
updates and hundreds of simultaneous "reads", making it a
good choice for corporate departments and small businesses.
All of our development is done in New York City, NY. But we
support clients all over the world.
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