As your business grows it will likely begin to exceed the capabilities of MS Access. Before reaching a critical decision point you will want to have considered your options and planned your path. There are a number of challenges that a business using MS Access will likely experience. They are:

1. Database Size Limitations: An MS Access database can only grow to 2 gigabytes including all data, forms, queries, reports and temporary tables. The practical limit, once leaving space for temporary tables is about 750 megabytes.

2. Simultaneous User Limitations: 20 simultaneous users should have little trouble over a well maintained and error free network. More than 20 simultaneous users may begin to impact speed.

3. Slowdown and Bottlenecks: Speed and responsiveness may degrade and database size grows. It may be necessary to review and refine queries and indexes to take corrective measures. With continued database growth a move to SQL Server will eventually be necessary.

4. Query Limitations: MS Access, actually the Jet Engine, does not implement the full set of SQL and it has other limitations. What can be done in a single query in SQL Server may require several nested queries in MS Access. Some advanced SQL Server queries cannot be supported at all.

5. Professional Programming Standard Hurdles: Our programming standards require programmers to comment all code, and most often to write the comments even before the code is started. MS Access does not permit queries to be commented which is the antithesis of maintainable.

6. Data Corruption Vulnerability: MS Access is susceptible to data corruption because of network instability. Moving to SQL Server will fully eliminate the problem. How to upsize to SQL Server is not as straightforward as it might sound. The following items need to be considered and several decisions are necessary.

7. MS Access and SQL Server Versions: You will likely want to use current versions of MS Access and of SQL Server. If the MS Access application needs to be updated to a current version you will want to do that first. Same with SQL Server.

8. Table Changes and MS Access Application Changes: Each table will require a primary key. That is always a good practice but a necessity when moving to SQL Server. The entire application will need to be reviewed once the data is migrated to SQL Server. Some MS Access functions may need to change. As an example, subdatasheet views of the data will need to be implemented differently.

9. Transition to SQL Stored Procedures: The speed advantages of SQL Server will be best realized if compound queries are reprogrammed as SQL Server stored procedures. All MS Access queries should be evaluated for that transition.

Access For Business brings you an organization known for providing services to clients upsizing from MS Access to SQL Server. If you are searching for experts with demonstrated reliability and extensive MS Access and MS SQL Server experience please visit our websites http://www.access-for-business.com and http://www.strandmanagement.com.