At a very high level, when you upsize Access to SQL (it's a native feature of Access) Access will create the tables and data in SQL for you. Once that is finished, you create linked tables to the SQL database and rename the linked tables what your local tables are. This means you use the same Access database you have now and your forms, queries, reports VBA all think it's using the same data. No, recoding not even user training because to them, it's the same thing but on the back-end the data is in SQL.
A few advantages are:
1. Access does not handle multi-users access that well
2. SQL will defintely have better performance and backup capabilities.
3. No need to compact the DB anymore.
If your access file is corrupt now especially with all that data, you could be up the creek without a paddle. I'm sure you can restore from backup but what if somone spent all morning entering data?
Once you get to SQL, you can do some more uber cool things in the future like making it web based or at least some part of it web accessible like reports.
My $.02
More info ->
http://www.aspfaq.com/show.asp?id=2182
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Originally Posted by Eric5273
I just did a little bit of reading on SQL, and it sounds like it would be overkill. What advantages does SQL really have over Access?
It seems that for less than 10 users, Access does not really have problems. Also, our database is only around 35 MB in size. It's amazing how much data can be crammed into a 35 MB database. We have over 17,000 invoices, over 9,000 clients (companies), over 25,000 individual contacts, and over 97,000 transactions (a transaction is the notes/summary of a telephone conversation, any kind of correspondence, or meeting with a client). All that in a single 35 MB file.
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