MS Access vs MySQL

I run a website that uses a database, but not intensively, on a WAMP configuration. I currently use MS Access:开发者_如何学编程 We have a small database, < 4MB max, that can be downloaded for easy backup and emailed to organization members for completing tasks in the MS Access software (like generating reports, etc.). However, it requires MS Office software and isn't exactly standard use with PHP.

On the other hand, our host provides MySQL, which is typical with PHP, generally more powerful, has a greater availability of software and support, but backup can be a little messier.

But, MySQL is not hosted on the local host. So, I copied the information to MySQL, and made a copy of the site using the MySQL database. I proceeded to run some benchmarks, and surprisingly, MS Access was faster, marginally.

I am not sure which is the best direction to take at this point. Hoping the community can give some pros and cons that I haven't though about.

Since Access is way simpler, it's not surprising that rough benchmarking reveals it's faster. The difference comes when you have to deal with concurrent sessions and large data sets. Desktop apps are normally used by a single process at a time but in web applications concurrent queries are the norm.

Said that, if you've been using Access for a while and you didn't find issues, I don't think that switching to MySQL is going to make any difference regarding performance. I'd think about other considerations:

• Would you like to have Linux hosting as an option?
• Are you proficient enough with MySQL as to migrate code in a reasonable timespan and with reasonable quality?
• Can you replace those reports with plain HTML listings?

BTW, MySQL backups can be automated with a simple command line script, it should not be messy at all.

One pro that MS Access is already offering you is a client interface. You've mentioned users that are "generating reports, etc.". Unless you already have an alternative in place that will do everything they need, switching to MySQL will likely be a no-win situation.

I'd stick with Access database for such a small scale project! There's no need to move onto a bigger technology for the hell of it - put it this way, if you had 4 kids, and a bus came up for sale, would you buy the bus because you can fit your 4 kids in it?

One big advantage of MySQL IMO is that PHP has built in support for MySQL. You can use ODBC with PHP to connect to MS Access but it's one more thing to set up and one more thing to 'break' at some point.

Could you set up MySQL on the host? Is it likely that your database would grow and become more complex in the near future?

Access is ideal for us: several accountants using it in our accounting work in the same room but not through the internet, and none of us is programmer. The only thing to think about is the fee for Access copy-wright.

Mysql is free, yes, that is great, but Mysql lacks stored queries, forms and reports, and the quick "on_click, on_doubleclick..." functions that are extremely useful and easy to handle in Access. Are there ways to solve this problem. Thank you.