Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

I'm looking for something that can read .MDB files, the format
Microsoft Access uses, from Python. I need to do this on
Linux, without using Microsoft tools. I just need to read
the files once, so I can load the tables into another database.
Speed isn't an issue, and I don't need to access the file in
database fashion. The files are too big to read into RAM all at once,
though.

I tried "MDBtools", but the only (last) release was
a pre-release three years ago, and I've encountered
many build problems trying to make it work on Fedora
Core 6.

John Nagle

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

John Nagle schrieb:I was just gonna suggest it. Under ubuntu, it works easy as cake, and
converts the mdb nicely to some CSV-files.

I think you should really try and make it work.

Diez

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

Diez B. Roggisch wrote:What MDBtools did you install? The RPM, a checkout from CVS,
or the downloadable distribution? They're all different.

John Nagle

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

On Mar 19, 2:45 pm, John Nagle <n...@animats.comwrote:I've read .MDB files using ODBC. I don't know how big your files are,
but I had a file with almost 3000 rows and I was able to fetch it in
1-2 seconds. If you want to give it whirl, you just need to create an
ODBC connection and then do the following:

myconn = odbc.odbc('mydb_connection_name')
mycursor = myconn.cursor()
mycursor.execute('SELECT * FROM db_name')
mydata = mycursor.fetchall()
mycursor.close()
myconn.close()

for each in mydata:
# do something like pull the info from the variable "mydata" and
send it into the other database


It is fast. But you may like what the others have said more.

Mike

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

<kyosohma@gmail.comwrote in message
news:1174334517.125928.274140@l75g2000hse.googlegr oups.com...
| I've read .MDB files using ODBC. I don't know how big your files are,
| but I had a file with almost 3000 rows and I was able to fetch it in
| 1-2 seconds. If you want to give it whirl, you just need to create an
| ODBC connection and then do the following:

I'll just mention that OpenOffice.org Base can make ODBC connections and
output in several formats. Don't know if their ODBC works with .MDB.

tjr

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

Terry Reedy wrote:I seem to remember I actually managed to open an MDB file with the Open
Office database component (but that was on Windows, so I can't guarantee
it will work on Linux).

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC/Ltd http://www.holdenweb.com
Skype: holdenweb http://del.icio.us/steve.holden
Recent Ramblings http://holdenweb.blogspot.com

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

kyosohma@gmail.com wrote:....But that was on Windows, right? ODBC is just a connection
mechanism. You have to have a database of the right type to
which you can connect. On Windows, there's Jet, the engine
behind Microsoft Access, but what do you connect to on Linux?

John Nagle

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

Steve Holden wrote:That works fine on Windows, because OpenOffice can use Jet, the Access
engine. Don't know if it would work on Linux. Probably not.

I need to read about 10,000,000 records, and running them through an
OpenOffice spreadsheet probably isn't a good approach. There are quite
a few tools for dealing with small Microsoft Access databases in memory, but
they don't scale.

MDBtools would be the right answer, if it worked. I have some questions
out on the MDBtools forum, trying to work around some build problems.
MDBtools hasn't had a release in three years, and it won't build with
Fedora Core 6.

John Nagle

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

>
The one that comes with ubuntu edgy. Just


apt-get install mdbtools

or something, that's it.

I don't want to start a distro war here - but I always found the
RPM-based distros lacking, to say the least.

Diez

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

Try installing it from source. Perhaps getting a newer verion is all
you would need. If at that point you find there is a bug, report it.


Diez B. Roggisch wrote:--
Shane Geiger
IT Director
National Council on Economic Education
sgeiger@ncee.net | 402-438-8958 | http://www.ncee.net

Leading the Campaign for Economic and Financial Literacy

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy@udel.eduwrote:
I just tried opening an mdb file from Open Office under Ubuntu. No problems
whatsoever except that the pulldown for 'Connect to an existing database'
listed 'Microsoft Access' twice. (This was a completely standard, never
before run, copy of Base.)

re: Anything available that can read Microsoft .MDB files from Python?

Shane Geiger wrote:I did.

I finally got MDBtools to build by throwing out all the "configure"
stuff and the makefiles, then writing some simple makefiles of my own
that just build the command line tools. The supplied build files
fail if you don't have bison, flex, autoconf, etc., although the
documentation claims otherwise.

There are some nice little command line tools in there,
fighting to get out from under all the guck. The original
author intended, I think, to build this thing up into a full
database module for .MDB files. But that was back around 2004
and never got done. So MDBtools doesn't have enough stuff
to directly interface to MDB databases as databases, but
it has too much for a file format converter. It's the extra
guck that has portability problems.

I posted the makefiles I used to the MDBtools forums on
SourceForge.

John Nagle