Databases

I have been using Microsoft Access to create database applications for the company I work for, for quite some time now and I am starting to get rather a lot of problems as I introduce more complex code and quiries. I think its time I moved on and looked at other options. Does anyone know or can anyone recommend what development tool or tools I should look at and possibly use.

What are the requirements for your projects and what scale? Are your projects web based, do they need to be able to be distributed, how many people will use it, what platforms do you want to be able to support, etc.

By no means am I an Access fan, but I would advocate tweaking your db structure/queries to see if you can squeeze out more performance before moving on. If everything's designed well, and you still need more performance/features there's always my favorite, PostgreSQL , then again without more info about your specific situation, I'm not sure how relevant my suggestion is.

-b

What develpment tools (ide) are you using ?

May i suggest firebird sql server (from http://www.ibphoenix.com)

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/...3.972-Win32.exe

If you need an administration tool you can download from this address (Ib expert)
http://www.hksoftware.net/download/...5.0.56_full.exe

MySQL is my first choice. While PostgreSQL support more advanced features and is a true Relational Database Management Systems (I hope I got that acrymn corrent, its about 3:30AM), MySQL is still the speed demon and I have deployed it now for almost 5 years for various tasks.

I have heard a lot of talk about FirebirdSQL, its too new. Its great for development, but if your in the business world and need dependablity, MySQL and PostgreSQL have been tested.

I know of at least one major research/teaching hospital that uses MySQL with over 40Million rows of data and seem to run it quite well on a Linux Cluster.

Also, there are some tools out there that will help in coverting and importing your access database to mysql. Its a script called access2mysql if I remember correctly.

MySQL will hold performance right up there with Orcale to what, about 50 Million rows the last time I really read into the subject. Plus MySQL is proably the most widely used and proven database package in the world and you can't beat the cost...free!

The firebird(interbase) is older than you think
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterBase

There are many tools for firebird/interbase too

http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a...e=ibp_mig_tools

Mysql isn't free if you sell comecial applications
Firebird is free for commercial and opensource
application (Mozilla Public Licence)
Also about speed, Yes is true Mysql rocks on speed but not always the only thing matter in these days , and if there are many connections
to mysql it doesn't scale well (Java odbc connections)

I've tested interbase before on Cobalt Raq boxes, and everytime MySQL was the clear choice for what we were doing, mainly because of the large resource of exiting OSS applications that use MySQL on the backend.

Just try firebird (it has many bugs fixed from that version of interbase) , Now there is a php extension for it and many OSS applications (if they are written with standard sql) can be ported on firebird , one example is phpbb