Microsoft Access Version Features and Differences Comparison Matrix

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There is no chance that only some of the updates will end up written to the database; either all will succeed, or the changes will be discarded when the database system restarts.

With ODBC's in-memory policy, transactions also allow for many updates to a record to occur entirely within memory, with only one expensive disk write at the end.

Implicit transactions were supported in Jet 3. These are transactions that are started automatically after the last transaction was committed to the database.

However, it was found that this had a negative performance impact in bit Windows Windows 95, Windows 98 , so in Jet 3. Jet enforces entity integrity and referential integrity.

Jet will by default prevent any change to a record that breaks referential integrity, but Jet databases can instead use propagation constraints cascading updates and cascading deletes to maintain referential integrity. Jet also supports "business rules" also known as "constraints" , or rules that apply to any column to enforce what data might be placed into the table or column.

Access to Jet databases is done on a per user-level. The user information is kept in a separate system database, and access is controlled on each object in the system for instance by table or by query. Queries are the mechanisms that Jet uses to retrieve data from the database. The query is then compiled — this involves parsing the query involves syntax checking and determining the columns to query in the database table , then converted into an internal Jet query object format, which is then tokenized and organised into a tree like structure.

In Jet 3. The query is then executed and the results passed back to the application or user who requested the data. Jet passes the data retrieved for the query in a dynaset. This is a set of data that is dynamically linked back to the database. Instead of having the query result stored in a temporary table, where the data cannot be updated directly by the user, the dynaset allows the user to view and update the data contained in the dynaset.

Thus, if a university lecturer queries all students who received a distinction in their assignment and finds an error in that student's record, they would only need to update the data in the dynaset, which would automatically update the student's database record without the need for them to send a specific update query after storing the query results in a temporary table.

Jet originally started in as an underlying data access technology that came from a Microsoft internal database product development project, code named Cirrus. Cirrus was developed from a pre-release version of Visual Basic code and was used as the database engine of Microsoft Access. Tony Goodhew, who worked for Microsoft at the time, says. For VB [Visual Basic] 3. Jet became more componentised when Access 2. A retrofit was provided that allowed Visual Basic 3. Jet 2. DLLs in Windows are "libraries" of common code that can be used by more than one application—by keeping code that more than one application uses under a common library which each of these applications can use independently code maintenance is reduced and the functionality of applications increases, with less development effort.

The Jet DLL determined what sort of database it was accessing, and how to perform what was requested of it. If the data source was an MDB file a Microsoft Access format then it would directly read and write the data to the file.

If the data source was external, then it would call on the correct ODBC driver to perform its request. Jet 3. Jet 4. Microsoft Access versions from Access to Access included an "Upsizing Wizard" which could " upsize " upgrade a Jet database to "an equivalent database on SQL Server with the same table structure, data, and many other attributes of the original database".

Reports, queries, macros and security were not handled by this tool, meaning that some manual modifications might have been needed if the application was heavily reliant on these Jet features. It introduced a new default file format,. It also brought security changes and encryption improvements and enabled integration with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3. The engine in Microsoft Access discontinued support for Access 1. The driver is not part of the Windows operating system, but is available as a redistributable.

The engine in Microsoft Access discontinued support for Access 95, Access 97 and xBase files, and it also discontinued support for replication.

Version of Microsoft Access restored support for xBase files, [15] and Version introduced a Large Number data type. From a data access technology standpoint, Jet is considered a deprecated technology by Microsoft, [17] but Microsoft continues to support ACE as part of Microsoft Access.

Therefore, third party software support for JET databases is almost exclusively found on Windows. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Database engine built by Microsoft. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources.

Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. July Learn how and when to remove this template message. Microsoft Access 95 Excel Microsoft Project 4. Retrieved June 19, Archived from the original on August 8, Retrieved March 28, Retrieved January 2, LibreOffice is a clone of OpenOffice and ended up being more successful.

The suite includes Base, which is a good free alternative to Microsoft Access. OxygenOffice Professional is a free, open-source clone of OpenOffice, which claims to be compatible with the original, Apache run version of the suite and offers extra templates and fonts.

Google G -Suite is a powerful rival to Office The free version is just called Google Docs even though it contains more than the eponymous word processor. Google Forms is part of the suite. You can use Google Forms to create data entry and data query screens and use Google Sheets a spreadsheet as the back-end database.

The interface of Google Forms is very easy to use and anyone can create a small database application without any technical knowledge. Check out this YouTube video on how to create a database with Google tools. KDE produces Calligra Office, an open-source project that is free to use. The database system in Calligra Office is called Kexi.

It uses the OpenDocument format,. Zoho Creator is an online application creation environment that is based around the development of Access-like databases. The development environment includes a guide, with staged tasks that help you create a database and screens and reports based on it. This is a professional solution, however, there is also a free tier.

The two paid plans are charged for by subscription. You can assess the paid editions of Zoho Creator with a day free trial. This is a codeless website development tool with the ability to create data forms for data entry and query. The company offers a hosting service as well. You can design a site or a page and host it on the Bubble servers, setting up new databases or linking back to your existing databases.

This is a paid service but there is a free version. If you were depressed about the decline of Microsoft Access, then hopefully, this review of the status of the package and alternatives to it has given you some cheer.

The way forward out of your Access depression is to try out some other database systems. One problem you will face is migrating your data out of the. Therefore, Access users will need to look at alternative systems to run their desktop databases, such as LibreOffice Base, Zoho Creator, or Bubble. Since the creation of SQL in the early s, several proprietary adaptations have been formulated.

Microsoft Access uses a version of SQL that is very close to the original, definitive language. Visual Basic went through a transformation in when it was integrated into the. NET framework. For a while, it was called Visual Basic. NET or VB. NET but now has gone back to the Visual Basic name.

Visual Basic is still supported by Microsoft and is still being developed. The latest version is Visual Basic , which is also referred to as VB This is sold as part of the Visual Studio package.

This is not included in G-Suite. The current status is that Microsoft is fully committed to continuing development and support of Microsoft Access. My experience with popular open source software is that the timeline for fixes and upgrades is significantly faster than with profit-driven companies. I still Access all the time, both in the old version and in the latest version in Office I use it for combining data from different sources, creating tools to edit large groups of data, or creating individual and personalised reports from large databases.

I would miss it tremendously. I have used several existing products in the past 20! With a bit of study you can create anything you want. Free trial on their website. The online community shoutout to StackOverflow especially is great. I would dread having to create forms and reports, and deal with other apps in any other program.

Almost anything is possible with VBA. I have created a library which, in part via Windows API, handles a number of useful things such as localisation, connections to open source databases, security, etc.

The future may be more front-end than back-end, at least for developers, but I think it will remain in the desktop environment. But the lack of Web functionality today is an enormous limitation. Personally, I have looked at dozens of products, but I have found very little that can worthily replace it in allowing the development of Web applications.

For me, it is unthinkable to throw away hard-earned VB and VB. NET skills to develop pre-packaged applications on clouds whose location is often unknown. No-code products are too simplistic and low-code products often have pitfalls that make them not as simple as a RAD should be.

Does anyone remember Foxpro? I work for a nasdaq listed global company and in my team we work on data sets, dashboards and reporting. I still use access to make it easy for our team to link data, UI forms to interact with data and VBA to validate business rules about the data. The biggest advantage of Access over python, and other tools is rapid application development.

It has a dbms; a VBA scripting environment that supports procedural modules and object-oriented classes; a visual UI to rapidly create tables, views, macros and table relationships; a method for executing table-level data validation so that invalid records are immediately checked before it is written; and of course — a fantastic and easy to use UI Forms builder to make it easy for users to interact with the data. The alternative to this is using multiple tools and programming languages which can be time consuming to build, test, integrate, roll-out and maintain.

The alternatives may also be costly Oracle, SQL, MySQL etc and require costly personel as it would require someone with skills in various tools and programming languages in comparison to someone who knows Access and VBA. The reality is, the vast majority of corporations run on excel and make decisions using excel and PowerPoint.

By all means, Python and others are good. But no other app so far can beat Access. A business that wants internal ability to tailor their system as they require and not depend on a group of developers to tell the company what it requires. Are future predictions still relevant? FileMaker pro and Alpha software are alternatives to Access. They have been around longer than Access and are still current. I have developed basic applications with all three. In the old days it was pretty expensive to add components that were beyond my skill level , like a scheduling calendar for instance.

There are so many no code applications in the market now, that have these features built in. Access etc. How can you build a basic business app without calculated fields! At first, yes, it has drawbacks stuck on windows, web shortcomings, 2GB limitation , but it offers. I wonder, which of the alternatives give a similar offering, beyond simple list designers?

It is a fact though, that millions of SMBs out there, the backbone of economy, find it irreplaceable and obviously, this is the reason why MS is keeping it alive. Needless to say, there are a lot of people out there who rely on Access, as well as the number of developers who find the potential task of having to convert all of the existing Access systems to a new platform, financially daunting, to say the least.

Access is dying but that decision was made nearly 20 years ago. Microsoft has made no substantive changes to Access. Access is still limited to 64k rows. Databases are limited to 2GB. A normal progress of development would have had more data tools and fewer data size limitations.

So there was NO development worth spit. Access is dead of intentional Manual Strangulation. Are you kidding me? It has been my bread and butter, but in the last several years, I have heard from clients who believe it is a dinosaur. That makes me sad. Yes, MS missed the boat on creating a successful web-based program. But not all companies need that. And with the better remote options, like Team Viewer or whatever, working virtually on your desktop has come a long way.

And linking up to a sharepoint or SQL backend, gives you additional options. But I am biased. I had done much work with Appleworks — a flat file database in the days when RAM on computers was measured in kb rather than mb or gb. Needless to say, I soon outgrew it and needed a relational database for what I was building. Originally I tried FoxPro, which I found unintelligible at that stage. Neither was particularly friendly to a self-teaching novice and each hid the nuts and bolts — supposedly a desirable feature and, perhaps, for some it was because that seems to be the way of most modern database tools.

Yes, perhaps this is only of relevance to me and a result of my lack of coding skills and fundamental facility with programming and other computing concepts. However, what I learned from using Access did allow me to develop quite useful applications for a library environment that could be utilised over a network by a double-digit of branches quite effectively.

It enabled me to semi-automate and reduce or eliminate manual errors in many common processes where even if there were more robust and sophisticated alternatives, the non profit institutions for which I worked in no way had the budgets for them. Never-th-less, I have continued to utilise Windows for my database work, purely because there was nothing similar for the Mac. Now retired and just wanting a relational database for my own pleasure in creativity and building personal applications that can make my life easier, I have been looking for another relational database that offers what Access did and that is at a price I can afford.

You have a typo: Does Office include Microsoft Access? I agree. I used Access for many years to keep track of clients and it kept me organized and also helped me get Employee of the Year Awards 4 times. I agree with you whole heartedly. I love MS Access and have worked with this software many years two decades.

Access has that flexibility to make forms and reports look good for presentation. They have a great product here and there is still a huge following, I just hope they do not give up on it. I feel you Andrew. I feel like there are still companies out there that would benefit from an Access database. Not everybody needs a huge cloud-based system! They done it with FoxPro, which was used way more than Access at the time.

However, it is worth to mention, all of above databases can be moved to Web in no time. And that is not possible with Access. But the tools are there.

And free. Hi, I am a rental business owner, I learned to use Access without code over a 9-month period in There are four tables in our database, customer records, equipment records, job records and rental monthly snapshot records. This allows viewing of individual customers and groups thus: — Equipment rented — Contractual dates and financial information — Dates of installation and maintenance — Alerts to carryout statutory pressure tests, change cartridges, servicing etc.

Our staff, with our Access database application on their PC can connect with the SharePoint Lists all updating and viewing the same data from anywhere. We own the application and the data.

My point is just how brilliantly useful Access is. I suspect the potential of Access is not fully appreciated and valued by businesses. I agree! I learned Access in short order while working as a temp as an administrative assistant. I mail merge all that information into word templates I created for all kinds of pleadings and letters. I fully agree with what your saying. I have built several business and personal applications that I use on a daily bases. There are no intellectual property rights for developers.

Everything is shared with the community. It has been my bread and butter for over twenty years. Access could have been the premier development platform for small to medium size applications but Microsoft completely blew it! Have the ability to create a standalone executable application. Have the ability to convert an application to a web interface.

Get rid of the stupid ribbon and have more flexibility in developing the UI. Is there any possibility of creating either by a group or a company such an application development tool with all these suggestions included and available either at a reasonable cost of one time purchase or as a free tool? Agree with you? MS showed a lack of vision on what Acceess could have been.

They have hust ceded cloud based db app territory to others. An enjoyable read. The truth is that Access has no rivals. This is a shame because there are some problems with it. The other problem is Access gets a bit messy for big projects. If you split it into separate modules that helps but then you have multiple copies of your library code or at least on Access I had that problem. I totally agree. MS Access is such a cool app to focus on delivering values and not spending hours on finding how to solve technical issues.

In connection with projects handling huge amount of data that needs to be cleaned or updated, it is so much faster than excel or other. The only reason why everyone is using Access is Office dependency.

Not Access dependency. Office, as well as Windows. This two dependencies are not to take lightly, particularly in the developing countries. Access has proven to provide us the best overall value for many years. We can easily create and manage small applications with no assistance from IT. Microsoft will continue to support it indefinitely. There are way too many Microsoft Access applications in production-critical business areas to simply pull the plug.

I am just a dumb redneck from MO who was fortunate enough to get exposed to MS Access nearly 20 years ago. During the last two decades, I have been able to develop many applications to manage data, and give users functionality that they would not otherwise have thanks to MS Access.

While all of the things I have been able to do with MS Access are possible through other means, it seems like finding developers in the workplace who will make these things a reality are few and far between.

I listen to people in I. There solutions are SharePoint forms that are very simplistic and limited compared to what you can do with MS Access. Yes, I can create a SharePoint form on the Intranet in minutes for someone to add data to a table. However, giving someone options that are molded to their specific working environment is not an option with those forms. My databases that I have designed over the years with MS Access are applications first and databases second.

I have designed everything from a simple personal contacts database to a custom form that allows the workers in my field of work to make phone calls from an Access form that queries contacts from multiple data sources. I work as a power grid operator who has to call people out when power outages occur in a timely manner. The user then selects the first name in the list and clicks a call button on the form. A phone call is initiated with the calling software our phones use dialing the number selected from the list in the Access form.

The reason for someone to say that MS Access is irrelevant, when it can perform a custom workplace function like the one I have given in this example, can only be explained by one reason — the people making that statement do not know how to use MS Access to its full potential. I have done many things with MS Access over the years that have made places I have worked more productive.

People are mesmerized by some of the tools I have created for them with MS Access. We have an Outages Calendar that we manage with a SharePoint form on our Intranet, and I used Access to tap the data in that calendar and place the data in a custom form that displays a full screen view on large monitors in our work area with the upcoming work we are expecting on our power grid.

The form also has a feature that allows us to toggle between that screen and a full screen view of the weather radar on these large monitors for defined time intervals.

We have some really cool tools that many people see when touring our facility. They have no idea that a software that is part of the MS Office Suite is what is making major parts of our operation click.

Even with some of the custom applications I have been fortunate enough to design with MS Access, I have only used a minimal amount of its full potential. If it can make it until April , I will be one happy man.

Thank you Chris. You are spot on. The overwhelming majority of individuals who have developed Access solutions, did not utilize sound, structured programming techniques and thus created poorly designed databases. Quick Hits I commend you for taking the time to learn and do it right. If you take the time to explore the current and future business requirements of a project, then you will know if Access … and how Access can be a benefit.

I love Access and VBA. If you do it right, understand its configurations and specifications … utilize industry-standard best practices flexible, powerful and secure systems can be developed, deployed and sustained to support a majority of business needs at a fraction of the cost of larger systems. You just have to learn how to use it properly. The organization I currently work for was hit with a system-wide online virus that crippled their business for a few years. Now, they need to revamp, secure and optimize their legacy on-prem Access solutions.

I thank this application because it has gotten me where I am today, working with data! Thank you for sharing your story, do you know if there is a group or forum of Access user fans where we can get together? I would love to hear more stories and experience such as yours. Thanks Chris for the refreshingly positive examples! I have carried through my Contacts DB and Investment Manager until today and they still have features that no other product on the market can rival.

Whenever I needed a new feature I just created it. The flexibility is huge but I just had to learn as much as I needed. I am still running Office on Win 7 and have no issues with minimal maintenance and very high productivity. Populist software changes often with few new features or removal of useful ones just for the sake of changes are a killer of productivity.

I will soon have to move to Win 10 and dread the effort of changeover will Access still run my applications without major adjustments? In my opinion consistency and reliability and backwards compatibility are the most important features of any software. Hi Chris! I have also creating many applications for our agency. You name it, I developed it in Access.

I LOVE the app and the apps are all so dependable. I was wondering if you encountered the last release. They somehow broke control of the. It broke the ability for multiple users to open. First one in locks it exclusively.

We had to revert back to. SOOooo frustrating. Maybe I should convert all my backends to SQL but I love the ease and flexibity of just linking to an Access data file. So nice to see another developer out there like me who sees the intrinsic value of Access.

Many in our IT staff demonize this app and are also completely ignorant of how it even works. Take care, Kennedy. I was stuck with simple librarys for storing tables in files. A full relational database, more so than FoxPro. Proper SQL queries. For the sorts of things people do in business there never was anything better and after 30 years still nothing better.

I keep looking. The only rival where I was working was Lotus Notes. The secretary could generate a database and send out a form by email and have answers typed directly into her database. It took her about 10 minutes to do that.

I really could not do that in Access. Obviously IBM killed that product it was cutting their bespoke programming profits. The only other way of getting the same result as Access would be to use an Integrated Development Environment and code it all up in a compiled programming language.

You get a better result but it would take 10 times as long. It is just so easy and intuitive to use and allows me to attach local and online links to entries. So arrogant to drop Microsoft Access, i have been a supporter since Access2, Using large amounts of VBA and automation some bespoke programs can be created, totally not available off the shelf, and a far cry from a contact database.

Standalone databases not on the web still have a place in business. Keep Access going we have made you a fortune over the years. They want everything online.. You cant very well protect your data by having nothing but intranets and closed systems can you? How dare you! We used Access in the same way for many years, but moved away from it, favoring SQL scripts over GUI-based operations because scripts allow better repeatability, modifiability, QA-ability, self-documentation, and version control.

I expect to see it in future antique shops and museums much like the toys from my youth are now displayed…. Google Forms for what I catch is a single table form presentation for a spreadsheet, by nothing a database handling and linking different tables.

The only real downside to MS Access is that it cannot be effectively deployed via a browser. This limits internet access to an Access application to a virtual Windows desktop environment like a VM or Citrix. Access is a great front-end GUI and report-writing solution for small to medium companies as well as departmental apps. The new direction of Microsoft to the Power platform is great and Access can to some degree work within that framework.

Over the past two years I have been developing a robust data modeling and administrative system that integrates across numerous functions and applications.

It uses Access a conduit for data transformation and publishing. I completely agree with you Phil, and to add, I think that MS Access has become one of the most underestimated tools over the past few years. Where I live almost every medium sized company and quite a few large companies have moved over to O and are beginning to take advantage of SharePoint, PowerApps and Flow.

I always create my relationship based tables in Access and then upload to SharePoint. This gives me the ability create a fully relationship based data-sets in SharePoint within minutes. And as you mentioned, the mere act of opening Access with an internet connection automatically backs up the data and also gives users the ability to perform offline tasks… Amazing!

It is imperative that MS Access is supported for Microsoft NET6 on VS, as the demand for such developers is growing day by day and we will be able to use Access skill for next 10 years. It is easy to link to multiple Excel or. CVS files and do regular, right and left joins using Access. If there is a cheap or free tool that does it as well and easily, would love to know about it, but until I find a replacement, for this tool alone, I would truly miss it if it were gone!

The article completely ignores the online support angle. The level of crowd-sourced support is just astounding. You Google the problem and get nothing. Oh, and the fact that Access has changed so little over the years? It means that the subroutine you find online from will work today. Same with the instructional videos. Makes you realise in the end these new features are just not worth spending the time learning. Show me any other product out there where you can develop complex DB application from analysis to deployment in less 15 minutes.

I do hate it, but will miss it if Microsoft nix it. I am sometimes amazed that some of these databases even work when I see how badly the tables are designed, and the associated VBA, queries etc. Access is unique, because it is a database that comes with a full set of tools to build a functional application.

Or you could call it an application builder, that comes with a database! There are many of these legacy applications running well under current versions of Windows and many clients who would be lost without them.

They have a very large customer base that depends on it. One thing about Access that many developers love: it has a small footprint and is highly efficient. New highly specialized applications can be developed quickly and relatively cheaply. The downside with Access is security, but when it is deployed on a network, network security takes over and these applications run securely.

Access rocks. The ribbon sucks. Microsoft totally blew it with the later versions that it developed. Access could have evolved into an extremely powerful tool for small to midsize applications using SQL Server as its database. I used to work for a company that was developing applications in dot net using C sharp. I am still clinging to Office for that same reason.

At work I use Access desktop version to store and combine data from different sources f. To me, storing data in Excel is like summoning the evil one. MS query in Excel is painfully slow and data integrity… number stored as text, oh my! Access does all that, the query builder is terrific, and you can build and automate reports in no time. You have no idea how much time I save with reporting only. Btw, try sharing data with an external company via Sharepoint, Teams, Onedrive if your global sysadmin acts like Mordac, the preventor of information services.

Mail an Access report or exported query and everybody is happy. Hello there! One thing Assess in not that good is a security. And this is not discussed in length or not even mentioned. Security this days is a paramount and no matter how much Access is good as a tool, it is not safe for anything more than a home usage. Yes, the SQL Server can be used, but than it is not a standalone database, and multiple licenses are needed. Still, one can connect and dump the data which is exactly against the security principles.

So, decisions, decision, is Access for domestic usage or corporate? I am getting daily questions on how to move Access to the Web. The interest is huge.