I found Access to be extremely powerful and fairly intuitive as a tool for reporting and simple as well as more complex databases. But then, I was a technoid for many years, and had dozens of other languages and database training behind me. If you intend to be a technical type, SQL is important, because it can be used on many different platforms, on the desktop as well as mainframe. With something like Access, you can tie together information from simple little user-built tables with huge, complex mainframe relational databases.

The information, the results, the reporting and records, are the point. The need a supervisor has for "all the information in one place" is really the reason for any of it. Whether it is physically or logically in one place is the decision of the programmers, but the end-users who are trying to do their jobs with information is the point.

Having been there, I know how easy it is to get caught up in the technology and have fun noodling around with the various software products that show up daily. However, having also been a technology consultant, I can also sympathize with the needs of the end users who don't want to know how to program, just want the information.