[fpc-pascal] Reading MDB (MS-Access) data under Linux

[Jim]

On 1-11-2010 12:18, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I need to write a data conversion app. Has anybody read MDB data under
> Linux yet, using SqlDB? I saw there was a ODBC database component, and
> searched by Ubuntu repository. I installed 'iodbc', 'libiodbc2' and
> 'libiodbc2-dev'.   The 'iodbc' package came with a GTK ODBC Admin app, but
> I have no clue how ODBC works.
> 
> * Anybody that can confirm that I can read MDB files via SqlDB's ODBC
> component.
> 
> * Any pointers and URL's on how to setup ODBC under Linux (Ubuntu)?
> 
> 
> Any help or pointers would me much appreciated.
> 
> 
> Regards,
>   - Graeme -
> 
Hi Graeme,

I suspected there's no ODBC driver for Access under Linux... but:
There is a tool to read mdb files, have only tried it once or so:
http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/
Don't think it's an ODBC driver though.... hmmm apparently the docs
http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/faq.html#what
tell me I'm wrong ;)
aptitude search mdb
returns these promising results:
libmdbodbc
mdbtools
The
unixodbc
package also shows up.
(on an old Ubuntu 7.10 machine)

Apparently you have to install unixODBC. IIRC there are 2 free ODBC
driver managers under Linux: unixODBC and iODBC.
I've used one or the other in the past, wasn't that hard to get working,
IIRC you had to edit some text/ini files that specified which driver (=
the mdbtools ODBC driver in your case) you wanted to use.
Then setup a ODBC data source more or less like in Windows...

Might be a good idea to remove iodbc etc to lessen scope for confusion.

Good luck,

-- 
Regards,

jb