Top 5 Desktop Databases Access is the "Old Faithful" of desktop databases. There's also quite a good chance that you already own a copy -- it's included with Microsoft Office Professional, Developer and Special Edition. You'll find the familiar Microsoft interface and an extremely thorough online help system. The greatest strength of Access is its tight integration with the remainder of the Office suite. It's a breeze to share and transfer data between Access, Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Also, Access serves as a great front-end for any ODBC-compliant server database (like SQL Server or Oracle). Microsoft's current release is Access 2002, which is included as part of the Office XP suite. As a stand-alone product, Access sells for around $339 but you can usually find it for $329 when bundled with Office XP Professional.
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