[PLUG] mdbtools

[Carlos Konstanski]

Robert Citek writes:
 > On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 12:24 PM, Carlos Konstanski
 > <ckonstanski at pippiandcarlos.com> wrote:
 > > I'm considering going the route of exporting the data into a text file dump, and
 > > then importing it into a more usable database.  This seems to be quite doable
 > > with the basic tools.
 > 
 > I haven't used mdbtools in a while (a year or so?).  IIRC, you may
 > need to be careful with embedded end-of-line characters when you dump
 > to a text file.  Also, I have a vague memory of where clauses not
 > being honored.  That is, you can write "... where foo=10", but it will
 > simply ignore it.
 > 
 > But other than a few quirks which had some easy workarounds and may be
 > fixed by now, the mdbtools worked great for my needs.
 > 
 > Good luck and let us know how it works for you.
 > 
 > Regards,
 > - Robert

In a huge stroke of luck, I discovered that my Access tables are all
actually "Linked ODBC" objects.  They are all database links to an
MSSQL 2000 server's tables.  So I'm off the hook for this go-around,
since it will be much better to deal with a real database that has a
network address and stuff.

There are quite a few Access databases floating around in my
department, all performing scarily critical tasks, so I'm still
interested in this suite of utilities.  Keep the tips coming!  I found
the various mdb-* commands to work as advertised.  The Linked ODBC
tables were not visible, however.  I guess it can only read the data
that is actually contained in the .mdb file.
-- 
Carlos