[nmglug] MS Access -> MySQL

[Gary Sandine]

Hi Mars,

On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 10:01:41PM -0700, J. Marsden DeLapp wrote:
> One of the tasks is converting a MS access database to MySQL and
> some sort of user interface that runs on Gnu/Linux. I was thinking
> maybe Knoda for the frontend or maybe do it with PHP. I currently
> use this database in my business to manage projects, time sheets,
> expenses and billing.

Programs from the Debian package mdbtools can be used to extract
table schema (for MySQL and others) and data (in csv) from an Access
2000/2002 (JET4) or older (JET3) database:

http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/

Once that is done, it can quickly and easily be moved to MySQL (the
whole process can be done with a shell script if desired).  Here is
a pretty good page about mdbtools that I used to get started doing
such a conversion recently:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/gagne_access.html

I tried a couple of conversion programs (kexi/koffice, oobase), and
they didn't work at all -- they were unable to open the Access 2000
database I was given to work with.

-- 
Gary Sandine <gars at laclinux.com>