Microsoft Access: The Database Software That Won’t Die.

Here’s why every IT person in existence despises Access: A user develops some application in Access. Sure, it is needed by the business. I’m all for users having what they require to get their work done. But they don’t tell IT about this little project. Then they start attempting to scale it to more than the 1-2 users who originally needed it. That’s always when the problems begin.

The application breaks. It has data and concurrency issues. It crashes. Then, the user comes to the IT department about this broken “business-critical” application which the IT department has never heard of and has no knowledge of at all. Inevitably, the user washes his or her hands of the application and the IT department must now support this poorly-developed pile of unknown and atrociously-written code. It’s an unfunded mandate, foisted on people who had no role in developing said application, and it’s usually either develop it properly (hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost at least) or continue supporting the Access apocalypse written by a user, which is often so support-intensive it basically needs its own dedicated helpdesk person.

This has happened to me at least a dozen times in my IT career. And this is why all IT people absolutely abhor Access and always will.