MS-Access
MS Access is a component of the Microsoft Office suite of programs and is therefore part of the most popular and widespread desktop system in the world. Microsoft products will be supported for many years to come so you can have confidence that the software in which your company has invested will not become redundant. MS Access is an excellent prototyping tool that may be used to establish the functionality of a database development before upsizing it to interface with existing corporate databases held as Oracle or SQL Server tables.

SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 is a full-featured relational database management system (RDBMS) that offers a variety of administrative tools to ease the burdens of database development, maintenance and administration. Following are the six of the more frequently used tools: Enterprise Manager, Query Analyzer, SQL Profiler, Service Manager, Data Transformation Services and Books Online.

Enterprise Manager
Enterprise Manager is the main administrative console for SQL Server installations. It provides you with a graphical "birds-eye" view of all of the SQL Server installations on your network. You can perform high-level administrative functions that affect one or more servers, schedule common maintenance tasks or create and modify the structure of individual databases.

Query Analyzer
Query Analyzer offers a quick and dirty method for performing queries against any of your SQL Server databases. It's a great way to quickly pull information out of a database in response to a user request, test queries before implementing them in other applications, create/modify stored procedures and execute administrative tasks.

SQL Profiler
SQL Profiler provides a window into the inner workings of your database. You can monitor many different event types and observe database performance in real time. SQL Profiler allows you to capture and replay system "traces" that log various activities. It's a great tool for optimizing databases with performance issues or troubleshooting particular problems.

Service Manager
Service Manager is used to control the MSSQLServer (the main SQL Server process), MSDTC (Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator) and SQLServerAgent processes. An icon for this service normally resides in the system tray of machines running SQL Server. You can use Service Manager to start/stop or pause any one of these services.

Data Transformation Services (DTS)
DTS provide an extremely flexible method for importing and exporting data between a Microsoft SQL Server installation and a large variety of other formats. The most commonly used DTS application is the "Import and Export Data" wizard found in the SQL Server program group.

Database SQL 2000 Features
1) DBO access to SQL
2) Manage/Add SQL Users
3) Stored procedure support
4) Full text search
5) SQLXML 3.0
6) SQL Disk Space Meter
7) Multiple SQL Databases
8) ASP.NET SQL Server Session Support
9) Daily Backups
10) SQL Reporting Services

MS Access
Microsoft Access is a development environment used to create computer databases for the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. Microsoft Access is a computer application used to create and manage computer-based databases on desktop computers and/or on connected computers (a network). Microsoft Access can be used for personal information management (PIM), in a small business to organize and manage all data or in an enterprise to communicate with servers.
Like any other computer application, in order to use Microsoft Access, you must first open it. There are various ways this can be done. Microsoft Access is a classic computer application and it gets launched like the usual products you have probably been using. As such, to start this program, you could click Start -> (All) Programs -> Microsoft Access:
Microsoft Access is an integral part of Microsoft Office Suite and functions within the suite by allowing data to be imported from Microsoft Word or Excel
Microsoft Access is a relational database management system (DBMS). At the most basic level, a DBMS is a program that facilitates the storage and retrieval of structured information on a computer’s hard drive.

MySQL
MySQL is a database. A database is a data storage feature. It can be used to store, sort, arrange and display information. MySQL is a functional feature on it's own. For our tutorials, we will be using PHP commands to use the functions of a MySQL database.

MySQL is a data storage area. In this storage area, there are small sections called TABLES. Very similar to a normal HTML table, the MySQL tables consist of rows, columns and cells.
MySQL has been criticized in the past because it does not have all the features of other Database Management Systems. However, MySQL continues to improve significantly with each major upgrade and has great popularity because of these improvements.

Oracle
Oracle9i Database Server describes the most recent major version of the Oracle Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) family of products that share common source code. Leveraging predecessors including the Oracle8 release that surfaced in 1997, the family includes:

• Personal Oracle, a database for single users that's often used to develop code for implementation on other Oracle multi-user databases
• Oracle Standard Edition, which was named Workgroup Server in its first iteration as part of the Oracle7 family and is often simply referred to as Oracle Server
• Oracle Enterprise Edition, which includes additional functionality

In 1998, Oracle announced Oracle8i, which is sometimes referred to as Version 8.1 of the Oracle8 database. The "i " was added to denote added functionality supporting Internet deployment in the new version. Oracle9i followed, with Application Server available in 2000 and Database Server in 2001. The terms "Oracle," "Oracle8," "Oracle8i," and "Oracle9i" may appear to be used somewhat interchangeably in this book since Oracle9i includes all the features of previous versions.

Oracle has focused development around a single source code model since 1983. While each database implementation includes some operating system-specific source code, most of the code is common across the various implementations. The interfaces that users, developers, and administrators deal with for each version are consistent. Features are consistent across platforms for implementations of Oracle Standard Edition and OracleEnterprise Edition. As a result, companies have been able to migrate Oracle applications easily to various hardware vendors and operating systems while leveraging their investments in Oracle technology. From the company's perspective, Oracle has been able to focus on implementing new features only once in its product set instead of having to add functionality at different times to different implementations.