Microsoft Access was way ahead, in my opinion. Especially that it came with a ready database, reports, etc.. and with VB6 you could practically do anything you want with the operating system. It's interesting we have thrown it all for something much more inferior.
VB6 could do more than access. I used both in the day and I found Access basic was limited and once you had some tools in VB6 to deal with databases and tables then it was easier than access.
However this is so long ago I have forgotten the details.
Access was probably simpler for a simple database entry and query.
However Access"s database was a disaster constantly getting corrupted etc. However I would note I was in companies that had access to full databases like Sybase and Oracle and as we had site licenses they were effectively free for each project. We often took a users Access project and made it maintainable in VB6.
VB6 was a programming language environment, Access was a client for the Jet DB engine. You could technically connect to more than just Jet DB's but that's primarily what it was for.
One thing that i think would be very useful would be for VB to have inherent database support at the language/core level with the IDE being able to edit tables, etc. Essentially something similar to what tools like dBase/FoxPro/Visual dBase/etc but also being a generic application development tool like VB.
Visual Basic did have some database support but the actual database functionality/engine relied on external engines instead of being part of the runtime itself and it wasn't really part of the language. Being able to define a data type that is transparently mapped to a table's columns in a database and variables being cursors in a database would help with a bunch of smaller scale applications.
Basically something that mixed VB and Access. Ssadly that'd mean one would cannibalize the other's sales so it was never done.
