Here are some guidelines for database size, object number and naming limitations contrasted across Access 2000/XP, SQL Server 7.0, SQL Server 2000, and MSDE 2000. The main reason for this chart was to answer the question "how many rows can I get into a table?" -- which doesn't have a direct answer, but is limited by many of the variables listed below (not to mention disk space!).
Parameter
Access 2000/XP
SQL Server 7.0
SQL Server 2000
MSDE 2000
Number of instances per server
n/a
n/a
16
16
Number of databases per instance / server
n/a
32,767
32,767
32,767
Number of objects per database
32,768
2,147,483,647
2,147,483,647
2,147,483,647
Number of users per database
n/a
16,379
16,379
16,379
Number of roles per database
n/a
16,367
16,367
16,367
Overall size of database (excluding logs)
2 GB
1,048,516 TB
1,048,516 TB1
2 GB
Number of columns per table
255
1024
1024
1024
Number of rows per table
limited by storage
limited by storage
limited by storage
limited by storage
Number of bytes per row (Excluding TEXT/MEMO/IMAGE/OLE)
2 KB
8 KB
8 KB
8 KB
Number of columns per query
255
4,096
4,096
4,096
Number of tables per query
32
256
256
256
Size of procedure / query
64 KB
250 MB
250 MB
250 MB
Number of input params per procedure / query
1995
1,024
2,100
2,100
Size of SQL statement / batch
64 KB
64 KB
64 KB
64 KB
Depth of subquery nesting
50
32
32
32
Number of indexes per table
32
250 (1 clustered)
250 (1 clustered)
250 (1 clustered)
Number of columns per index
10
16
16
16
Number of characters per object name
64
128
128
128
Number of concurrent user connections
2552
32,7673
32,7673
54
Using a federated database in SQL Server 2000, you can have 32,767 databases of 1,048,516 TB each, which is probably more space than anyone will ever need (though that phrase itself has proven dangerous to say <G>).
This is how many concurrent users Access will allow, however this number is much smaller when Access is used in a web-based environment (see Article #2195).
SQL Server allows 32,767 concurrent connections, or the number of licenses allowed, whichever is lower.
MSDE has a performance throttler that kicks in when more than 5 workloads / batches are being run at once (see Article #2343).
The Query Designer interface in Access limits you to 199 parameters, though it is possible (but not recommended) to create a query with even more parameters.