I strongly agree with you that MS Access is not a real relational database. With its emphasis on physical files, Access confuses the physical and logical aspects of databases.

For that matter, using the same argument, MYSQL is also not a real database either. When you can specify the format you want your table data to be stored in, you are no longer talking about a relational database. Then, too, is their insistence that foreign keys (or referential integrity) are not required. This makes it abundantly clear that the designers of MYSQL wouldn't recognize relational database theory if somebody hit them on the head with it.

Ravi