If you are someone who has been using Microsoft Access for a while you may be wondering what the benefits of moving away from it to a different platform like MySQL would.
MySQL provides a bunch of benefits that may make the tedious conversion process worth the hassle after all. These apply both if you intend on keeping Access as your user interface for accessing the database or move to an entirely new client.
Data Sharing
There are some data sharing features in Access, but they are not very robust, and it really feels like Microsoft Access was designed in mind for a single user, who would carry out operations locally. On the contrary, multi-user access over networks is one of the main design principles of MySQL. It can handle multiple simultaneous users and can serve a large number of clients. All of this without being error prone or becoming slow. If you are looking to have a database that needs to be used by multiple people at once, moving to MySQL could really help your company.
Access of Information
With Microsoft Access, you can mainly only use your database from the Microsoft Access client application. You can continue doing this once you’ve converted database from MS Access to MySQL, but it also opens up a multitude of other possibilities. MySQL has many other alternative clients available including both command line and GUI applications. Additionally, it is also helpful if you plan on developing on the web.
Many web servers like Apache have a deep integration with MySQL through a number of different applications including Python and PHP. This means that you can integrate your database into a web application using the language of your choice. This also allows you to create multiplatform apps that are capable of providing users access to the database as long as they have a web browser on their device. The best part is that all of this can be done using free tools, without ever needing to even touch a proprietary solution.
Backup Management
If your company has a large number of Access users, database migration from Microsoft Access to MySQL makes maintaining backups and data integrity much easier. If your database is centralized in a MySQL server, you can easily back up all of the users’ data with simple procedures that are standard and easy to put in place.
However, if you have, let’s say, 100 users, each with a locally stored Access database that needs to be backed up, it leaves you with very little options. Either you can rely on individuals to back up their own database which they may neglect to do or you can try and set up a network backup, which is complicated to set up but will ensure that data is more regularly backed up. It’s easier to just convert database to MySQL and use a centralized system, however.
Overall, these are just some reasons you may want to convert from Access to MySQL. Additionally, MySQL is better at handling larger datasets, is free and multiplatform, reducing your need to rely on a single company and expanding your options.