Prior to the introduction of Access, Borland (with Paradox and dBase) and Fox (with FoxPro) dominated the desktop database market. Microsoft Access was the first mass-market database program for Windows. With Microsoft's

In addition to using its own database storage file, Microsoft Access also may be used as the 'front-end' of a program while other products act as the 'back-end' tables, such as

Microsoft offers free runtime versions of Microsoft Access which allow users to run an Access desktop application without needing to purchase or install a retail version of Microsoft Access. This actually allows Access developers to create databases that can be

Microsoft Access applications can be made secure by various methods, the most basic being password access control; this is a relatively weak form of protection.

Users can create tables, queries, forms and reports, and connect them together with macros. Advanced users can use VBA to write rich solutions with advanced data manipulation and user control. Access also has report creation features that can work with any data source that

Access stores all database tables, queries, forms, reports, macros, and modules in the Access Jet database as a single file.
For query development, Access offers a "Query Designer", a

• Comparison of relational database management systems
• Form (web)
• MDB Tools