I have written several successful applications that did update SQL data using linked tables using Access queries, DAO or ADO code.  The last big project I worked on I actually translated all of the DAO to ADO using Access 2000/SQL 2000.  I think that like any programming environment, things can be done correctly or incorrectly, with good performance or bad depending on the tecniques used.  I did primarily Access/SQL programming for about 5 years so I learned a lot about making it work.

Tomorrow there will be an article about Access Projects.  I think that is probably the way to go if you want an Access GUI to your SQL apps.