At 2:23 AM +0000 11/1/01, Alex Kirk wrote:
>Today, I started a temporary position at the US Export/Import Bank.
>They're a government agency that provides loans and other financing
>servies to small exporters and importers who can't get funds from
>their local banks.
>They put me to work cleaning up the database of their marketing
>division, which sends out direct mail, faxes, and e-mails, among
>other things. Besides being poorly organized, etc., there's a
>serious flaw: they're using MS Access 2000 to manage over 350K
>records.
>While speaking with my boss, she mentioned that they were looking to
>go away from Access, as it crashed regularly and had major trouble
>handling that big of a load. They were particularly concerned, since
>the database is projected to grow to 1 million records in the next
>year or two. I mentioned MySQL as a possible solution, explained the
>concept of open-source software, and got her intrigued.
>I'm very much uncertain about how to take the next step, though. I'd
>like to be able to present her with a good sales pitch for MySQL,
>but I don't really know enough about it to make one up (I'm still
>very much a newbie to it, though I do like it so far). Since I'm
>sure this sort of thing has come up before, I'm wondering if you can
>point me to any good resources, particularly as they might relate to
>the US Gov't, banks, or direct mailing agencies.
>Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
>Alex Kirk
This might help you make your case (something I wrote).
Migrating from Microsoft Access to MySQL:
http://www.nusphere.com/products/access2mysql.pdf
