What are the major drawbacks to using OpenOffice DB vs. Microsoft Access?

Question

I know that Open Office Database uses a java database backend. Does anyone have any insight on how this compares to the Jet Database Engine?

Also is the query designer/reporting nearly as robust as MS Access?

Answer 1

It's odd for me to say this, because I'm not a fan of Access at all. However, I think Access is actually the nicer product here, for a number of reasons:

• It's been around a lot longer (maturity)
• The core db engine is included with windows.
• There's an easily distributable runtime if your users don't already have Access and you need to distribute an application.
• Over the years it's had enough people try to use it for things it's not designed to do (web sites, workgroups) that they've put enough work into performance and concurrency so the two more recent incarnations (2003, 2007) are actually very robust if you're doing something it is designed to do (desktop crud app, talking to linked sql server tables, very small workgroup). (I guess this is really the same as the first point)

On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with the OpenOffice DB, and it's free.