Knowledge of SQL is a great thing. Sometimes, you may need data sorted in not usual way. Trying to do such a sorting in GUI can take a lot time (if it's even possible), where in SQL you could achieve it in less than a minute.
If I good remember, Access have option to insert custom SQL queries, so you can use it as a graphical representation of your data.
Eventually, you can use this tool (my favorite for MySQL):
http://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/