ANSWER:

Ok, I don’t normally do this (post tutorials or hand-hold), but it sounds like you’re at least trying to do the right thing by your employer, and I can respect that.

I suggest you start with a free version of SQL Server. Unless your software is wildly popular or you generate massive amounts of payroll data, you will probably never out-grow it.

The free version is called SQL Server 2008 R2 Express.

Now, SQL Server Express ships by default with TCP/IP connections disabled (don’t stress too much about what that is, just know you need to enable them). You can find out how to do that here.

Now, what to do about that tutorial? Well, to be honest, a tutorial for SQL Server doesn’t really cut it. Databases are very complex, and you need to understand at a bare minimum 3rd normal form and primary keys. Indexes and foriegn keys come a very close second.

There’s an eBook from MSDN that might help, but it might be a bit too hardcore for a beginner and has a bit of assumed knowledge. Otherwise, Google might be able to help.

Accessing SQL Server from within Microsoft Access is actually very straight forward. It’s even got a very useful scale-out wizard that will even copy your Access database into SQL Server and update all your links and copy all your data. Your first point of call (after installing SQL and enabling TCP/IP connections) might actually be looking at SQL server through the eyes of Access. It’s likely to make things a bit less fuzzy.

The point of that is, although I could never condone using an Access back-end database in a work environment (I’ve just seen too many of those projects outgrow what an Access back-end can handle), if you need to hit the ground running, you can just start in Access and get developing, and then let Access take care of the migration to SQL for you.

by Mark Henderson from http://serverfault.com/questions/383259