What is Microsoft Access?

Microsoft Access is a database management tool, which helps you create, manage and update your data.

What is Access?

Microsoft Access is a database management system (DBMS) from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a user interface and software-development tools. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite of applications, included in specific Microsoft Office 365 licenses or sold separately.

When should I use it?

This is a good question, and the answer is not a simple one – “it depends”. There is a natural progression when working with data in the Microsoft hemisphere, this is that you will traditionally start using Microsoft Excel, upon reaching the limits defined by the application (rows and complexity of the data), you will migrate into Microsoft Access which would allow for greater more complex queries and tables of data. Both applications have built in tools for helping you create graphical user interfaces. Finally, upon needing greater performance, more complex data structure and bigger data you will make the final move into Microsoft SQL Server.

At this point you will need to build a separate interface, as SQL Server only offers management tools to query the data. However it is worth noting you can connect Access to your SQL database to leverage the software development expect of Access with the performance and complexity of SQL Server.

What are some use cases for Access?

As previously mentioned it all depends on what you are trying to achieve, that said Access does come with some fantastic out the box templates to get you going and give you ideas of what is possible. Here are a few of the templates that are avialble to you, for a larger list take a look
here

Here is a great video from Microsoft about access

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