Microsoft Access is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that is part of the Microsoft Office suite of applications. It allows users to create and manage databases to store and organize various types of data. Some common uses of MS Access databases include managing inventory, customer information for businesses, and as a backend for small software applications. Access allows users to create tables to store data, queries to extract and analyze specific data, forms to view and edit records, and reports to output data. Relationships can also be set between tables to link related data for combined reporting and analysis.