[[...]]

[[... Jet ...]]

"MDB Tools is a package of libraries and utilities that allow Unix-like
systems to natively read Microsoft Access database (MDB) files."
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/mdbtools/

A simple way to interact with Access is via [CSV] files (see also the links there) - plain text files with comma-separated values (in German locale, Access does not allow to use commas though, because it is considered decimal separator, so use semicolons instead; Excel accepts commas though... ([RS]) 

[TDBC]

[Tclodbc]

[SQL Relay]

"Jet" is Access's persistence back-end, and the aspect of Access most
likely to interest Tcl developers immediately.  Win* has bundled Jet
for several years now--write a Jet-dependent application, and it should
work fine on any Win* host (since Win95?).

'CEPT that now, in 2002, MS has changed the name again, this
time from "Jet" to "MSDE".
[http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/] might explain more ...
It's also called "MDB" and "MSDB".

----

[Scott Gamon] - I'm pasting in this c.l.t. post by [Kevin Kenny], so I don't lose it:

You can use [database configure] to create an Access
database - in fact, you don't even need Access on the system.
(You do need Jet, but I don't think I've ever seen a Windows
box without it.)

Try the following code.  It creates an empty MDB file
at the location the user gives and then opens it.
======
 package require Tk
 package require tclodbc

 # Prompt the user for a database to create
 # (For opening an existing database, use tk_getOpenFile instead of
 # tk_getSaveFile)

 set types {
     {{Access Databases} {*.mdb} }
 }
 set fileName [tk_getSaveFile \
    -defaultextension .mdb \
    -filetypes $types \
    -initialdir ~ \
    -title "Create Database"]

 # Quit if the user cancels.

 if { ! [string compare {} $fileName] } {
     exit
 }

 # Create the database.  (Omit this if opening an existing database)

 set driver {Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}
 database configure config_dsn $driver \
     [list CREATE_DB=\"[file nativename $fileName]\" "General"]

 # Connect to the database.

 set connectString DRIVER=$driver
 append connectString \; DBQ=[file nativename $fileName]
 append connectString \; {FIL=MS Access}
 append connectString \; EXCLUSIVE=Yes
 puts $connectString
 database db $connectString
======
----
see also: [a form for Access Database]
----

[etdxc] - Just a quick note. When using tclodbc to work with Access memo fields, if you insert a record which contain a memo field that contains a large amount of data, you may get a problem rereading it. TclOdbc returns all the data associated with the memo, spurious or otherwise. In a rush (as always) I found the easiest solution is to store the memo as a two element list (or as two seperate fields), index 0 contains an integer 'size' of the memo and index 1 the memo itself. Use lrange to extract the actual stored text.

Of course there may be a (lot) better method. If so, please let me know.
----
[[Jet, ... [Windows] ... [ODBC] ...]]

----
Regarding "Access browsers":

"[Sourceforge] has a project called mdbtools
[http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/]
which can dissect access files.
I believe that it offers an [API] which can be pretty easily wrapped and
though it is not completely stable (according to traffic on their mailing
list) seems to do a pretty good job.  They also offer a rudimentary ODBC
driver."

"While I know very little about most of these applications, here's
[http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/webpublish/fwdbquery.html]
a list of freeware database tools on Snapfiles:

I have had some experience with both WinSQL Lite and SchemaPlus Lite - both 
of which are quite good and will likely do what you need."

"I've used QTODBC which is reviewed here 
[http://www.mindcracker.com/mindcracker/c_cafe/database/tools2.asp]."
----
[RS] 2008-06-18: Here's a cute little tool to dump a table of a .mdb database in to stdout in semicolon-separated format:
======
 #!/usr/bin/env tclsh

 set usage {
    usage: mdb2csv.tcl mdbfile table > csvfile
    Dump a MS Access database table to stdout in CSV format.
    MS Access must be running for this to succeed.
 }
 if {[llength $argv] < 2} {puts stderr $usage; exit 1}

 proc main argv {
    package require dde
    foreach {mdbfile table} $argv break
    set request "$mdbfile;TABLE $table"
    set it [dde request MSAccess $request All]
    foreach line [split $it \n] {
        puts [string map {\t ;} $line]
    }
 }

 main $argv
======


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