10 years on the same database, no failures, no corruption, no downtime unless I choose to rework something, does everything I need it to. What's the problem?
Although Access may work well for you there are way too many technical limitations that would prevent me from using it for well--anything. But then again I have a pretty solid understanding of SQL and programming interfaces for it.
The problem I have with access is that it is basically a file based database engine versus a server based database engine. This means that the integrity really is questionable for any mission critical application. Server based databases allow the benefits of integrity checking via a transaction log. If there is a problem or the request does not complete it will simply roll back to the previous data. If there is a problem with the request in Access it'll quite often hose something.
There is also no way that I've ever seen with Access to lock the database live for backups. The ability to back the system up when it's being used is pretty much non-existent. This is not acceptable to me AT ALL. I pull backups of our mission critical company databases on a HOURLY basis.
Access is practically unusable in a multi user environment because the query processing takes place locally. This means that large columns of the mdb file will be sent to the client machine for processing. There is also a lot of room here for corruption to occur.
Access has a 2 GB database limitation that is a deal killer for me. I have databases larger than 2 GB and I don't want to have to split these up and make sure that they don't hit that limitation..etc.
The Microsoft jet engine is also no longer in development. Bugs will be fixed--for I'm not sure how long but there won't be any new features. This means Access has a pretty weak future.
Access is good for personal use, just for yourself, it was never meant to be used in a multiuser business environment and Microsoft makes that very clear throughout their knowledge base articles.
Fixing corrupted Access databases is a good way to make some money. Lots of small companies that don't really know what they are doing put way too much critical data into it.
MySQL is free. It's damn solid--and I have a good understanding of it. There is no reason I would ever use Access nor would I ever allow any business application to use it.
All I can say Ed, is you must be an Access genius. I know I'm not one and I wouldn't ever put the effort into trying to become one. Lots of limitations and no benefit in my eyes.
