Is Access a viable DB for a start up website vs. SQL?

[shellyanne]

We are currently planning to develop a website that will need to be driven by a database (majority of site is searching records, and adding records). We are looking at developing the database within ACCESS and when traffic warrants migrating that to SQL or something else more robust. I would be interested in any feedback as to the pros/cons of using either of these DB programs, as well as any major issues that might affect code when migrating to SQL in the future. Does anyone also have experience or knowlege with respect to how many concurrent users Access can handle before performance drops are noticed? I thank each and every one of your for your feedback in advance!

 

[jmeadows7]

Well, the consulting answer is it depends on a lot of things, but...
Acess provides you with a back-end data repository, but if I were starting a web-site that is truly access by the public and not just my personal guestbook, I would definitely go with a Server database up front.
You have a lot more options with security, utilizing stored procedures to return complicated result sets (could be done with Access queries), stability, speed, size, triggers, and the list goes on.
While I am one of the BIGGEST proponents of Access you'll ever meet, you need the right tool for the right purpose. Actually, I typically utilize SQLSever for almost ALL of my Access projects - it just gives me better performance!

 

[Guest_imported]

I thank you for your comments! We are very concerned about the development time and costs associated with starting out on SQL. Therefore we thought that we could start off with Access, and as traffic increases be able to upgrade to SQL seamlessly. Are you aware of any migration issues when doing this? Everything I have read on Access indicates that it can handle up to 255 concurrent users, but do you have any experience to comment on; what point the performance will drop dramatically?