Hi Michael,

I agree Access is a very easy to start with database, but here are the
limitations to what Access can do:

1. The theoretical maximum number of concurrent users in an Access database
is 255. However, this figure is just the maximum
number possible, and you are more likely to find that the maximum number of
users is about 50-100, although depending on your
design, this might be less. This should certainly be borne in mind when
starting to design a database, as it is almost guaranteed that
although the initial brief called for only 15 users, after a year of
operation there will probably be twice that using the database.
Therefore over-engineering is required.

2. Also, Access isn't configured to run as a client/server database, so it
isn't optimized for running over a network. A true client/server
application will only call the data from the server to the client that are
needed. Therefore, you will probably see some network
performance degradation.

3. Access is also limited to how much data it can store. In Access 97, this
is 1 Gigabyte per database, and in Access
2000 it is 2Gb, although you can have multiple databases used to store
information in.

I believe this info is relevant for you to decide. I strongly recommmend
that if you haven't yet started with your app design,
switch to SQL as backend, and frontend with something as VB, that gives you
more flexibility and a far better UI.

HTH,
Anushi