For many years, I did the bulk of my development on Access. It was quick and easy to develop on and with the Upsizing Wizard, I could easily upscale it to SQL server when needed. I ran the cfwebstore.com website and demos on it as well, and appreciated how easy it was when I needed to move my sites....just grab a copy of the database and move it over to the new server.

As CFWebstore grew and became more database-intensive, I've definitely found myself moving further and further away from Access. As my site got busier, it started to have more problems, with timeouts and failures happening often on a daily basis. As I've needed more control over things like indexes and foreign key names, I've gotten to appreciate how well-hidden Access keeps such things. Upscaling doesn't always work properly, and trying to write scripts to upgrade Access databases were an incredible pain due to its failure to handle scripts. Security as well is more of an issue, requiring me to set up an separate location for my Access files and password-protecting them.

But neither was my site busy enough to really warrant moving to a SQL Server plan which is often a pricey option. SQL Server Express is becoming more common but still somewhat limited. I needed an option that was cheap, but more robust than Access. Enter MySQL.