Open Source databases

["Drews, Jonathan*" <DrewsJ@cder.fda.gov>]

Bryan Smith wrote:
>There are endless other issues with the MS Access + MSSQL combination. 
>They largely revolve around the fact that MS Access is a _single_user_
>database (what is also known as an "object oriented spreadsheet" ;-),
>and not really much beyond that except a form designer.  I know it seems
>quick'n powerful, but it's not the best way to reach MSSQL IMHO.

Interesting!  Here at the FDA, I have these problems with the MS Access
database for chemical inventory.

1) It cannot get it's check in times right. That is it is supposed to append
the current time and it doees not always do it. Furthermore there is no way
to revise the record to show the correct time.
2) It does appear  to suffer slowdowns or refuse to work, at times. Is this
due to the single user capacity that you noted above?
3) Access' ability to search for incomplete names is just awful. Say I want
to search for 2,4-dichloro compounds in the inventory. I only have the ? and
* wildcards to do it with and they do not seem to work well. The Microsft
database does a terrible job when searching on partial names. Can MySQL or
Postgres do better? I should hope so.


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