written by Microsoft Differences MS Access File based free distributable runtime (2007 or later) RAD tools (form/report designer) uses Jet SQL max file size 2GB SQL Server Express Client/Server model free no RAD tools uses Transact-SQL max database size 4GB (10GB for SSE R2), max one physical CPU
Technical Specifications & Limitations
Here's a look at some of the main differences in the limitations between Microsoft Access and SQL Server.
Attribute Access 2016 SQL Server 2016
Maximum database size (including 2 GB, minus the space 524,272 terabytes all objects and data) needed for system objects.
Maximum data size Whatever's left over 16 terabytes
after deducting the system objects from 2 GB.
Maximum number of simultaneous 255 32,767
users / concurrent connections Attribute Access 2016 SQL Server 2016
Maximum number of 255 1,024 for nonwide
columns/fields per table tables 30,000 for wide tables
Number of characters in a Text 255 2^31-1
field (Access) Bytes per varchar(max), varbinary(max), xml, text, or image column (SQL Server)
Number of characters in a Long 65,535 when entering 2^30-1
Text field (Access), or per ntext or data through the user nvarchar(max) column (SQL interface; Server) 1 gigabyte of character storage when entering data programmatically.4,000 when the UnicodeCompression property of the fields is set to Yes. This limit also applies to OLE Object fields.
Number of indexes in a table 32 including indexes 999 nonclustered
created internally to indexes per table. maintain table relationships, single- 8 indexes per field and composite memory-optimised indexes. table.
Number of characters in an SQL Approximately 65,536 * Network
statement 64,000* packet size Network Packet Size is the size of the tabular data stream (TDS) packets used to communicate between applications and the relational Database Engine. The default packet size is 4 KB, and is controlled by the Attribute Access 2016 SQL Server 2016
network packet size
configuration option.
Number of objects in a database 32,768 2,147,483,647
Number of fields/columns per 10 16
foreign key
Number of fields/columns per 10 16
primary key
Number of fields/columns per index 10 16
If the table contains one or more XML indexes, the clustering key of the user table is limited to 15 columns because the XML column is added to the clustering key of the primary XML index. In SQL Server, you can include nonkey columns in a nonclustered index to avoid the limitation of a maximum of 16 key columns.