Unlike SharePoint lists, this offers true relational database design with referential integrity, scalability, extensibility and performance one would expect from SQL Server.

[30] The database solutions that can be created on SharePoint 2013 offer a modern user interface designed to display multiple levels of relationships that can be viewed and edited, along with resizing for different devices and support for touch.

Access tables support a variety of standard field types, indices, and referential integrity including cascading updates and deletes.

It is also easy to place a database on a network and have multiple users share and update data without overwriting each other's work.

These options are available upon starting Access and allow users to enhance a database with predefined tables, queries, forms, reports, and macros.

Programmers can create solutions using VBA, which is similar to Visual Basic 6.0 (VB6) and used throughout the Microsoft Office programs such as Excel, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint.

The number of simultaneous users that can be supported depends on the amount of data, the tasks being performed, level of use, and application design.

Applications that run complex queries or analysis across large datasets would naturally require greater bandwidth and memory.

Access is often used by people downloading data from enterprise level databases for manipulation, analysis, and reporting locally.

Tables, queries, forms, reports and macros can now be developed specifically for web based applications in Access 2010.

Access Web databases published to SharePoint Server can use standard objects such as tables, queries, forms, macros, and reports.

[39] This offers a true relational database with referential integrity, scalability, maintainability, and extensibility compared to the SharePoint views Access 2010 used.

This actually allows Access developers to create databases that can be freely distributed to an unlimited number of end-users.

The runtime version allows users to view, edit and delete data, along with running queries, forms, reports, macros and VBA module code.

The runtime version does not allow users to change the design of Microsoft Access tables, queries, forms, reports, macros or module code.

These snippets of SQL code can address external data sources through the use of ODBC connections on the local machine.

Macros allow users to easily chain commands together such as running queries, importing or exporting data, opening and closing forms, previewing and printing reports, etc.

They made feature rich web-based application deployments practical, via a greatly enhanced Microsoft SharePoint interface and tools, as well as on traditional Windows desktops.

To create a richer, more efficient and maintainable finished product with good error handling, most professional Access applications are developed using the VBA programming language rather than macros, except where web deployment is a business requirement.

In the database container or navigation pane in Access 2007 and later versions, the system automatically categorizes each object by type (e.g., table, query, macro).

[46][47] It is particularly helpful in VBA where references to object names may not indicate its data type (e.g. tbl for tables, qry for queries).

Databases under 1 GB in size (which can now fit entirely in RAM) and 200 simultaneous users are well within the capabilities of Microsoft Access.

Performance can also be enhanced if a continuous connection is maintained to the back-end database throughout the session rather than opening and closing it for each table access.

Using this approach, each user has a copy of Microsoft Access (or the runtime version) installed on their machine along with their application database.

Microsoft Access has two built-in utilities, Database Splitter[53] and Linked Table Manager, to facilitate this architecture.

An additional solution, the SQL Server Migration Assistant for Access (SSMA), continues to be available for free download from Microsoft.

Further, Access application procedures, whether VBA and macros, are written at a relatively higher level versus the currently available alternatives that are both robust and comprehensive.

In many cases, developers build direct web-to-data interfaces using ASP.NET, while keeping major business automation processes, administrative and reporting functions that do not need to be distributed to everyone in Access for information workers to maintain.

All changes to the VBA project (modules, forms, or reports) need to be made to the original MDB and then reconverted to MDE.

Some tools are available for unlocking and "decompiling", although certain elements including original VBA comments and formatting are normally irretrievable.