I've been catching up on my reading, even stumbling through articles I'd intended to read as far back as late August. One such article that caught my eye was Hands-On: The Future of Access Revealed.
I have a passing interest in Access, not because I like it or want to know how to use it better but because I, like so many other SQL Server DBAs, often find myself inheriting Access databases after they've grown too big for their britches. In these scenarios, I almost always find the Access database is an ungainly beast whose creator either completely flaunted the rules of good database design or never even knew them in the first place. That always left me with a) tons of work to make the Access database upsize properly into a SQL Server database, and b) ill feelings towards the designer.
At various times in the past, Microsoft has made noise that the Jet database engine that powers Access would be substituted with the new SQL Server Express engine. This article makes it clear that no such good deed will be happening. Instead, Jet will be upgrade into something called Ace, which in turn will allow an even more eggregious flaunting of good database design rules by allowing multi-valued fields. Aaaagh!
Has anyone else had a tough time upsizing Jet database into SQL Server? What's your opinion about the new capabilities of Ace?
Best regards,
-Kevin
