MS Access


Restrictions of MS Access?
MS Access is limited in its database capacity, and the more complex the database application gets, the fewer the number of users and the smaller the amount of data your database can store before running into MS Access performance and reliability issues.

Microsoft Jet, the default database engine used by Microsoft Access is a file-sharing database system. Which is not meant to be used with high-stress application. For these type of applications, the best solution is to switch to a true client/server-based database system such as Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) or Microsoft SQL Server.

The maximum allowable limits in Access are
  • Size of an Access Database: 2GB
  • Number of objects in a databas: 32,768
  • Number of concurrent users: 255
  • Number of fields in a table: 255
  • Number of open tables: 2048
  • Number of enforced relationships: 32 per table
  • Number of tables in a query: 32
  • Number of joins in a query: 16
  • Number of fields in a recordset: 255
  • Recordset size 1 gigabyte
  • Sort limit: 255 characters in one or more fields
  • Number of levels of nested queries: 50
  • Number of AND operators in a WHERE or HAVING clause: 99
  • Number of characters in an SQL statement: Approximately 64,000