MS Access vs SQL Server Database

MS Access vs SQL Server Database

The information in this article applies to:
MS Access
MS SQL Server

One of the most important considerations to make when choosing which type of database to use is the amount of traffic you expect your site to have.

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 resources of the server thereby causing timeouts and database-related errors.

The SQL Server 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 database is on another server the resources on the web server will not be taxed as would with the Access database.