ACCESS OR SQL - WHICH BETTER SUITS YOUR DATABASE NEEDS?
When our clients expect a high level of performance from their web site, they are looking to us to deliver it. It is incumbent on us to use the best possible web applications to make it happen. That's why it's so important for us to look at one of the most common features requested by our customers: the Access database.

Microsoft says that "The Access ODBC Driver and Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Microsoft Jet are not intended to be used with high-stress, high-concurrency, 24x7 server applications, such as Web, commerce, transactional, messaging servers and so on." Also, "The Microsoft Access ODBC driver can have stability issues due to the version of Visual Basic for applications that is invoked because the version is not thread safe. As a result, when multiple concurrent users make requests of a Microsoft Access database, unpredictable results may occur."

Because the Access database will be on the same server as the Web site, it can use up a lot of the server's resources, thereby causing timeouts and database-related errors. A SQL Server, on the other hand, can give you unlimited users, 24x7 support and ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) transactions. The SQL Server has been designed to deal with high-traffic sites that are going to frequently call upon the database. Because the SQL database is on another server, the resources on the Web server will not be taxed as they would with the Access database. In addition, an Access database stored in your web directory provides virtually no security for your data.

For more information on the Access database, please read the entire Microsoft knowledge base article Using Microsoft Jet with IIS.

The bottom line is that for high-performance database needs in the Internet environment, Microsoft SQL is the better business choice.