The goal is "what does the customer want to do?". Sounds like he wants an application written in Access to manage some data.

Sure you can do that in Access and even get to the data easily from Excel.

I'd be more likely to put something together with Lightswitch. Have a real SQL backend, more powerful development language and tools, and can be web-based if needed. Then do reporting in SSRS. But I don't know the customer or what other needs/limitations he has.



>I'm not sure what info you need on the 'goal'; could you be a little more specific?
>
>It's not a huge amount of data. A bunch of master files, transaction files all adhering to a relational structure, and reports. Ability to pull the data via SQL and the ability to read data from excel preferably via office automation and to export to excel.
>
>Thanks a lot, Craig, for your help.