Inandrias Software (Pty) Ltd

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"Why does Inandrias use MS Access and not a more expensive database like MS SQL or Oracle?"

Inandrias can work with MS SQL as back-end database but so far ALL users have chosen the easier, cheaper and more flexible MS Access version.
Because:
  1. Microsoft Access is a low-cost mainstream product.

  2. Many developers and other support staff know MS Access well, but

  3. Inandrias on MS Access doesn't require any in-house database administrators or other IT staff.

  4. MS Access is truly multi-user and relational just as the more expensive databases are.

  5. MS Access supports transaction roll-back.  Inandrias is written to take full cognisance of this.  Any failure in hardware or software while Inandrias is storing a transaction will cause the transaction to be cancelled (rolled back) completely.

  6. MS Access supports fifty concurrent users.  (Microsoft says 255).

  7. Access (2000 particularly) has close web links so online data access is made easier. With a shift towards e-commerce, Access's web integration could prove very useful, if not now, then sometime in the near future.

  8. Access is part of the Microsoft Office suite.  So, if you own Office you already have MS Access.

  9. Access has works well with the Microsoft Office suite.  It has been designed with MS Office integration in mind.

  10. Microsoft Access is one of the best-selling desktop databases of all time.  Therefore worrying about future product support is next to unnecessary and with Microsoft's backing it will be around for some time to come.  Also, since Microsoft is constantly improving the database, we are sure that the investment is future-proof.

Databases are as good (or bad) as the designers and / or programmers that create them

The Financial Director of the local branch of an international company said "We spent a lot of time and money looking for a solution that worked on Oracle because we had heard that this was an Industry-strength database and would never fail us.

"You can imagine our dismay when, at every month end we found one or two transactions out of balance.

"We called in an independent expert and the answer was very simple: the programmer didn't use transaction roll-back in his code.  Whenever a user was posting a transaction and there was glitch in the hardware or software that caused the transaction to fail it created a partially posted transaction."

Bottom line?
 
The tool quality is irrelevant if the workmanship is poor.
 
Most systems written in MS Access are written by non-technical people who know little or nothing about database design principles.  When these systems break down MS Access gets an unwarranted bad name.
Inandrias has several features that overcome many of the arguments put forward by the "MS Access is not industry-strength" nay-sayers.
 
  • Distributed data tables

  • On-line data mirror updates and audit reports







For years, the IT community complained that Microsoft was abandoning Access, that they didn't invest enough in it, that the Jet Engine and DAO was dead, etc. 

Well, the Microsoft Access development team for Access 2007 was the largest ever and Microsoft made a huge investment that added considerable new features to Access.

 
  
 
Perhaps Access's biggest drawback is that it cannot do back-end processing.  This is resolved by using a tool like Team Viewer which allows authorised client PCs to execute jobs on the server thereby reducing resource-stealing network traffic.