~15 data sets w/ 25k rows & ~20 columns + quick one time reports = Access VS SQL?

I am working with around 10-15 datasets each containing around 25,000 rows and around 20 columns. Data is text in name/adress/desc and the rest numbers.

I need to be able to calculate certain fields, pull out data on demand for certain list of customers (10, 20, 30) and generally extract data based on certain criteria.

Am I better off using MS Access or using SQL?

Please ask if You need any additional info..

Access is a perfectly fine database system for small scale individual-user apps. Here are some criteria for shifting:

• Multi-user applications. Access doesn't do concurrency very well, so a multi-user database - particularly one where multiple users are making modifications to data - will bring Access to it's knees.

• Requirement to support advanced SQL functions (windowing, partitioning, MERGE, triggers etc).

• Large datasets. Access used to have hard limits on .mdb files at 2GB (IIRC), and I found the likelihood of corruption increases rapidly when the total DB size gets over a gigabyte. (Note that I haven't used Access 2010, so I don't know if things are better now in this regard.)

Note that if you have a front-end built in Access and just want to shift the database away from JET (Access's internal DB engine) onto a "proper" RDBMS, you can do so by migrating the data across and setting up linked tables inside Access to the new data source.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#14510, answer score: 2