What is Microsoft Access

Access Database

Microsoft Office Access is a relational database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools. It is a member of the Microsoft Office suite of applications, included in the Professional and higher editions or sold separately.

Version History:

• Access version 1.0 on 13 November 1992

• Access 1.1 release in May 1993

• Access v2.0 in 1993

• Microsoft Access 7.0 (Access 95) in 1995

• Access 97 (version 8.0) in 1997

• Access 2000 (version 9.0) in 2000

• Access 2002 (version 10.0) in 2002

• Access 2003 (version 11.5) in 2003

• Access 2007 (version 12.0) in 2007

• Microsoft Office Access 2010 was released in May 2010

• Microsoft Office Access 2013 was released in January 2013

The WSI Programming Experts have had vast amounts of experience with each version of Access back to and including V 2.0! So no matter what version of Access you are using, we have an immense amount of knowledge in how to use that version of the software to your advantage.

Access stores data in its own format based on the Access Jet Database Engine. It can also import or link directly to data stored in other applications and databases such as:

• Excel

• SharePoint lists

• text

• XML

• Outlook

• HTML

• dBase

• Paradox

• Lotus 1-2-3

• Microsoft SQL Server

• Oracle

• MySQL

• PostgreSQL

Microsoft Access can also be used to develop application software and is especially valuable in situations where an off the shelf package isn't tailored to the businesses needs or canned software contains too many un-needed features at a high cost.

Like other Office applications, Access is supported by Visual Basic for Applications, an object-oriented programming language that can reference a variety of objects including DAO (Data Access Objects), ActiveX Data Objects, and many other ActiveX components. Visual objects used in forms and reports expose their methods and properties in the VBA programming environment, and VBA code modules may declare and call Windows operating-system functions.