Access 12 will ship with a new database engine based on Jet, a database technology that was once slated for retirement but remains important to a variety of Microsoft products.

Jet is a Windows code library for maintaining and querying databases, optimized for applications running on the same computer as the database. Jet is unusual in its ability to pull data from many different data sources-including text files, Excel files, and remote databases-in a single query. While Jet is the primary database technology used by Access, Jet-based database engines also serve Active Directory (including Active Directory Application Mode) and the Exchange Server mailbox store.

As of 2001, Jet appeared to be riding into the sunset: Exchange was due to use a SQL Server-based engine, rather than Jet, in its next release, and Access 2000 had shipped with support for SQL Server as an alternative to Jet and an “upsizing” wizard for migrating Access data from Jet to SQL Server.

But in 2006, both Exchange and Access will ship new editions with database engines that are still based on Jet, for several reasons:

Access 2007 will ship with a new database engine based on Jet, a database technology that was once slated for retirement but remains important to a variety of Microsoft products.

Jet is a Windows code library for maintaining and querying databases, optimized for applications running on the same computer as the database. Jet is unusual in its ability to pull data from many different data sources-including text files, Excel files, and remote databases-in a single query. Jet is the primary database technology used by Access, and Jet-based database engines also serve Active Directory (including Active Directory Application Mode) and the Exchange Server mailbox store.

As of 2001, Jet appeared to be riding into the sunset: Exchange was due to use a SQL Server-based engine rather than Jet in its next release, and Access 2000 shipped with support for SQL Server as an alternative to Jet and an upsizing wizard for migrating Access data from Jet to SQL Server.

But Exchange and Access will soon ship new versions with database engines that are still based on Jet, for several reasons:

Access 2007 will ship with a new database engine based on Jet, a database technology that was once slated for retirement but remains important to a variety of Microsoft products.

Jet is a Windows code library for maintaining and querying databases, optimized for applications running on the same computer as the database. Jet is unusual in its ability to pull data from many different data sources-including text files, Excel files, and remote databases-in a single query. Jet is the primary database technology used by Access, and Jet-based database engines also serve Active Directory (including Active Directory Application Mode) and the Exchange Server mailbox store.

As of 2001, Jet appeared to be riding into the sunset: Exchange was due to use a SQL Server-based engine rather than Jet in its next release, and Access 2000 shipped with support for SQL Server as an alternative to Jet and an upsizing wizard for migrating Access data from Jet to SQL Server.

But Exchange and Access will soon ship new versions with database engines that are still based on Jet, for several reasons: