Is MS Access DBMS or RDBMS?
1. Introduction to Databases and RDBMS A database is a collection of files, a Database Management System (DBMS) is a program (set of programs) that stores and organizes data. One such organization method is relational where data is organized by means of related tables called relations and hence the name Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). RDBMS stores information in related relations (tables, subjects) which can be related using common fields. MS Access is a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). Like all database systems MS Access stores database information in a database file (MS Access uses .mdb extension), MS Access .mdb files store information about your database objects such as tables, queries, forms, macros, reports, access web pages, and modules.
Microsoft Access is an application development tool, not a DBMS. Access has some DBMS-like features (strictly, they are features of the Jet software, which happens to be bundled with Access and other Microsoft products). Those DBMS features are not relational because they are based on the SQL DBMS model rather than the RDBMS one. Although SQL is partially inspired by the Relational Model it is non-relational in many important respects, especially because it uses a “tuple-bag” representation instead of the set-theory representation required by E.F.Codd’s relational model. In other words SQL breaks what Codd called the “Information Rule”.
If you can implement referential integrity in a database, then its an RDBMS. In MS Access I suppose you can implement Foreign Key relationship between tables. In that case its an RDBMS (Relational DBMS) . Those days, in DBase, FoxBase, we were only able to create tables which are isolated. for example, if you dealing with EMPloyee Names in a Database, the DB should check whether the name is valid in the master table which contains all the Employee Detail. That is implemented by defining Foreign Key relationship. This is called Referential Integrity. That way, the tables are related to each other. If you are removing an Employee, you can define what actions DB should do in other tables where this Employee is used.
