Access

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Microsoft Access is a database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools. It is supported by Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and allows developers to develop application software.

The Microsoft Jet Database Engine is a database engine built by Microsoft. JET stands for Joint Engine Technology and its first version was developed in 1992. Jet is used as the underlying database engine by Microsoft Access and Visual Basic. It has also been upgraded for general use.

History

Access originated from Project Cirrus of Microsoft during late 1980s. The project aimed to create an application on Windows that can compete with Paradox or dBase. It used some code from both the Omega project (which is Microsoft's first attempt to sell a relational database product during the mid 1980s) and a pre-release version of Visual Basic. In July 1992, betas of Cirrus was released as a product and Access became its official name.

Concurrency Control

Multi-version Concurrency Control (MVCC)

In a multi-user scenario, the application will be split. This means that the tables are in one file called the back end (typically stored on a shared network folder) and the application components (forms, reports, queries, code, macros, linked tables) are in another file called the front end. The linked tables in the front end point to the back end file. Each user of the Access application would then receive his or her own copy of the front end file.

Data Model

Relational

Access tables support a variety of standard field types, indices, and referential integrity including cascading updates and deletes.

Access has a query interface, forms to display and enter data, and reports for printing.

Compression

Bit Packing / Mostly Encoding

By default, Microsoft Access uses unicode compression when creating the field via the table properties., all data for the text data types (Text, Memo, or Hyperlink field) are stored in the Unicode 2-byte character format.

Checkpoints

Non-Blocking

Indexes

B+Tree

Microsoft Access only support B+ tree index natively.

Storage Architecture

Disk-oriented

Microsoft Access can scaled to enterprise-level solutions by linking to multiple databases on disk or using a back-end database like Microsoft SQL Server.