# Friday, May 16, 2003

Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart have some pretty strong words about Access vs. MSDE. This is a subject I hadn't spent much time thinking about until pretty recently. I had the opportunity to give some presentations at an Access user's group conference (PAUG)

Being pretty much a died in the wool SQL Server enthusiast (bigot?) I hadn't realized how many people out there are writing useful, complex Access applications that are solving real business problems today. I also hadn't realized that most of them don't want to have anything to do with MSDE. As Sean and Scott put forth, it's just too much work. It's too hard to users to install, not easy to get configured properly, etc. Also, the SQL that MSDE/SQL Server supports is different enough from Access SQL to be not just a minor bit of tweaking in many cases but a full fledged porting activity, Upsizing Wizard or no.

So up until fairly recently, I would have been just as dismissive as Don Box was of their Access rant, but now I'm not so sure. I still haven't changed my feelings about the nature of Access (I still would use MSDE myself) but I have a much more profound understanding of the nature of the Access developer community, and how threatening rather than enabling MSDE looks to them.