Access vs MySQL (was: RE: MS-Access database - for archives)

[Dobbs, Aaron]

MySQL is designed to be a fully functional database with a mild to moderate
user load.

Access is basically Excel on steroids with strong relational and referential
abilities or, conversely, Excel is a watered down version of Access -
depends on your viewpoint.  

Access, to me, should be considered a development platform with rigorous
referential integrity enforcement options.  When the database is fully built
the upscale wizard could be used to upscale it to SQL 2000 (or Oracle, for
that matter) or you can run the SQL statements behind the Access stuctures
in SQL2K (or Oracle) i.e. port it from Access to SQL.  Access is a good
front end to the SQL2K backend (and as the M$ Office, Developers Edition
allows, it can be a custom built for this) because it understands & can
generate basic SQL statements to interface with the backend.

MySQL, while a very good database for general purposes, fails, for me,
because it does not provide for referential integrity through Foreign Keys a
la Oracle or SQL2K so I have to create triggers & rules to compensate and I
find this slows processing significantly.  

SQL2K, while expensive, is not cost prohibitive enough, for me, to consider
accepting slower & less functionality from MySQL.

Oracle, is too expensive by far, for me, so I would accept the slower
functionality of MySQL if I were prejudiced against M$ enough to not use
SQL2K.

Comparing Access to MySQL is unfair at best.  
Access is an application, MySQL is more an actual database.
MySQL to M$SQL7.0, SQL2000, or Oracle are better comparisons.

On further thought, Access would also be a good front end to a MySQL (or
other ODBC compliant) database.

-Aaron
:-)'

Aaron Dobbs
Network Services Librarian
Austin Peay State University


-----Original Message-----
From: Raymond Wood [mailto:raywood at magma.ca]
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 5:48 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: MS-Access database - for archives


On Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 09:47:20AM -0700, Karen Harker imagined:
> I've been trying to find the same thing out.  I did create one, but it
> seemed so complex that I was worried about its scalability...would it
> break-down under heavy load?  

All anecdotal evidence I've ever encountered from other web developers
suggests that Access simply does not scale.  This begs the question at
what point does it begin to fail?  This I do not know from personal
experience, but this article may shed further light on this point:
  http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-07-27-006-20-RV-SW

Raymond
-- 
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