Most new organizations or projects quickly move from managing their workflow on paper to tracking their data on spreadsheets. The next logical step is to implement a relational database that properly links all your data and ultimately provides many benefits for your investment dollars.
What can a database do for my business?
- Organization: A database can help to provide structure to your business processes.
- Data Validation: A database allows formatting rules for data entry (i.e. fields may be required, have strict formatting like a phone number or zip code, or have a maximum number of characters).
- Efficiency: Databases eliminate the need for the redundant data entry that is typical of spreadsheets.
- Data Security: Databases have more user security than a spreadsheet in the form of user access into the system and restrictions on access to the data that is viewable.
- Reporting: Quite simply, reporting is much more robust from a database where ranges of records for a single customer or dataset can be quickly generated.
- Searching: For the same reason as reporting, searching by multiple criteria is easier with a database and allows users to quickly hone in on specific records.
- Sharing Data: Many database users can access the same file and data at one time. Therefore, there is no file duplication, individual user edits and formatting conflicts that are common with spreadsheets.
- Greater Capacity: Databases accommodate a very large volume of data. In comparison, spreadsheets are much more limited.
- Historical Data: Older data can be archived in a database much easier or easily accessed for reporting. Keeping all historical data active would most likely push the limits of a worksheet to being too big and impractical.
Why choose MS Access over other databases?
- Popularity: MS Access is the most popular desktop database and comes standard in many MS Office packages.
- Inexpensive: The MS Access software is very inexpensive (not including development time).
- Self-Starting: A novice user can achieve useful results.
What are some limitations of MS Access?
- Lack of Support: It is common that the early MS Access development efforts are initiated by a team member that already has a full-time responsibility. When these team members are no longer available or have left the company there often is no one left with the experience to continue supporting the database. Furthermore, many experienced consultants are currently choosing retirement or have moved on to more modern database solutions; leaving a void for legacy MS Access databases that need support.
- Corruption: There are many reasons that a MS Access database file may become corrupted or damaged. Both hardware failures and software problems are to blame. Without adequate protection from these issues, these databases can become very unreliable.
- Scalability: While multiple users are allowed in MS Access, the database gets quickly overburdened. Additionally, compared to other databases, MS Access has low limit for the maximum amount of data supported.
- Lack of Developer Experience: Many do-it-yourself, non-programmer developers quickly get over their heads during development. Furthermore, early design decisions may heavily impact the usability and expandability of the database down the road.
- Upgrades: Many challenges, such as version incompatibility, are often encountered when migrating current data to the updated software.
- File Server: MS Access is a File Server application (not a Client Server Application). That means that the entire database and software resides in the memory of each user’s computer. This is inefficient and can lead to errors and potential corruption.
- Complexity is Predicted: If it is expected that the use of this database will become mission critical or serve a much greater need than originally planned, it is recommended to seek alternative databases such as one designed using SQL Server.
- Compliance: Certain rules (such as the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley Act – SOX, HIPAA & PCI – Payment Card Industry) that apply to many companies warrant the use of a higher-end, fully auditable database.
The database needs of an organization are usually unpredictable and change over time. Healthy databases are created and eventually grow and modify over the life of a business. When faced with these challenges, MS Access databases often continue to be used “as-is” and generally serve well-enough. However, when an emergency comes up, reliable, experienced support may be hard to find. Therefore, it is highly recommended to plan early for the next stages of development and have an experienced team to help. Whether a small database improvement or a full plan for the future is needed, Arkware is ready to be your guide!