A client has outgrown their Access database, and now I need to convert it to PostgreSQL. I don't have a lot of Access experience, so at first blush it seems like the best solution is to just export the data using text files or something.
Does anyone have any good suggestions for an easy way to get the DDL and data out of Access and into something real?
Based on http://www.postgresonline.com/journal/archives/24-Using-MS-Access-with-PostgreSQL.html but updated for Access 2019 with more details:
Install the PostgreSQL ODBC drivers.
You may have this already installed from installing PostgreSQL. If not, you can install them from https://www.postgresql.org/ftp/odbc/versions/msi/.
You should install the 32-bit driver if your Access is 32-bit and the 64-bit driver if Access is 64-bit. You can see if Access is 32-bit or 64-bit through File > Account > About Access.
Uninstall old versions of the PostgreSQL driver before installing a new one.
See Setting up PostgreSQL ODBC on Windows for more tips.
External Data > New Data Source > From Other Sources > ODBC Database. The keyboard shortcut for this is Alt > X > N1 > T > C.
Choose Link to the data source by creating a linked table, and press OK.
Next to DSN Name, click New...
Choose PostgreSQL Unicode if your databases is UTF-8 or a non Latin Encoding. Choose PostgreSQL ANSI if your database encoding is SQL_ASCII, EUC_JP, BIG5, Shift-JIS, or a LATIN character set. Databases made from Access 2000 or later are in UTF-8. Choose the 64-bit version if Access is 64-bit. Click Next >.
As the dialog says, "Type in the name of the file data source you want to save the connection to. Or, find the location to save to by clicking Browse." Click Next >. Click Finish.
Fill in the fields Database, Server, Port, User Name, and Password.
Click Connection and uncheck Bools as char.
Click Page 2 and check True is -1, and uncheck Updatable Cursors. Click OK. Click OK.
If you get an error that says "A connection could not be made using the file data source parameters entered", open ODBC Data Sources (64-bit) from the Start menu (or ODBC Administrator from Control Panel for Windows 7 or earlier), click Add..., choose PostgreSQL Unicode(x64), click Finish, enter the details for your database, and click Test.
Select the newly created .dsn file and click OK.
Now select the tables you want and click Save Password. If you are missing primary keys on tables, Access will prompt you for what fields or set of fields you would like to use as the primary key. This doesn't make any structural changes to the actual table, but in the linked structure, Access will pretend this is the primary key and use that accordingly for table updates and such. This is particularly useful for views where the concept of primary keys does not exist and you want your updateable views to be updateable from Access. If you click OK or Cancel to the question without picking a set of fields, that table will be marked as readonly, which is the desired behavior for a lot of reporting views.
To export data from an Access table to PostgreSQL:
Select the table.
Rename the table to what you want it to be named.
Make sure the default schema of the user you are using in Postgres, is the schema you want to export the data to.
External Data > More (in the Export section) > ODBC Database and select the DSN you created.
One gotcha here is that PostgreSQL will maintain the casing of the fields in the table and the table name, so it's best to rename all your fields to lowercase first so you don't have to be quoting them every time you use them.
Install Postgres ODBC driver on Windows computer.
Create a data source with "PostgreSQL Unicode" driver to your new database
For every table:
Use "File -> Export" choose type "ODBC Databases"
Confirm table name
Choose "Computer data source"
Select your data source
Works well if you do not have too many tables. I needed to automate this so I have created an VBS script which just issued keyboard strokes in proper time, like this:
set shell=CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
shell.Run("db1.mdb")
WScript.Sleep(5000);
shell.sendkeys("tablename1");
WScript.Sleep(1000);
shell.sendkeys("%fx"); ' Menu File, Export
WScript.Sleep(1000);
shell.sendkeys("%todbc"); ' Type: ODBC Databases
shell.sendkeys("~"); ' Enter
etc.
You should be able to write something that can see them both with ODBC or something, but failing that you could dump it to a text file or use a commercial tool.
This is an old script that I has not been updated in a while, but I used for a similar purpose: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/52267/
Another commercial option: http://www.datanamic.com/dbzipper/index.html
Access is a great program, but is hindered by its inability to export or connect to external ODBC sources easily.
Using the ODBC driver would be ideal, but the setup looks kind of daunting.
So I just exported the tables one by one to CSV files, then imported each one to the Postgres db through DBeaver, a really nice, free db admin tool - check it out here - https://dbeaver.io.
Related
SQL Developer show the schema prefix
i.e in package name now showing prefix will loading the sql developer
When browsing the contents of the Oracle Database, in this case PL/SQL programs, we show you the code that's stored in the database.
We add onto that,
'CREATE OR REPLACE'
We do not, add the schema prefix.
If I make changes to this and hit COMPILE, we maintain the schema (HR2) for you, even though I'm logged in as HR.
If you want the PL/SQL code with the schema prefix attached, use the DDL command.
If you maintain your source code in files and open said files in Oracle SQL Developer, you'll of course see the schema prefix in your code, assuming you put it there.
When running (or verifying the database) for a report in Crystal Reports 10, I am getting the message:
"The database table "SomeTable" cannot be found. Proceed to remove this table from the report?"
for multiple tables.
The report used to work fine. The report is getting data from multiple sources, and the missing tables are those that are coming from an ODBC connection to a SQL Server DB. I think the issue may be that when the report was created, the ODBC was pointing at a different instance of the database (same structures, just different location.)
I've checked and the report user has all the required permissions on the new database.
In Crystal, if you ignore the messages the report seems to run fine. However when deploying the report to be run from within the Crystal Report Viewer in a website, it is throwing a File I/O error.
This very handy blog post provides the solution: https://wisdomofsolomon.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/crystal-reports-tables-not-found-during-verify-database/
By running Show SQL Query you can see that the generated query is running SQL like
select * from databasename.dbo.SomeTable
It's the databasename part of that that seems to be causing the problem (although as far as I could tell, in my case the DB name isn't any different between the old DB connection and the new one in my case.) Amending the table queries to remove the databasename from the SQL solved the problem for me.
You can do this as follows:
go to Database / Set Datasource Location in the menus.
drill down in the report tree to the tables that are causing a problem
Under Properties, click Overriden Qualified Table Name:
In the text box, type the name of the table without the database name (e.g. dbo.SomeTable)
Do this for all the tables causing a problem
(As a comment on that blog post points out, you could also create a new connection and replace the tables with the equivalents from that new datasource, but that leaves you with the fully qualified table name from the new connection - so you might get the same problem again in future.)
in Crystal, under file and options and database tab, the data explorer must have tables checked. This is not an easy feature to know about
There's a facility in MySQL Workbench's EER Modelling mode to write an SQL script that's stored with the model. But I've looked all over the place and can't see any way of executing such a script, other than by copying and pasting it into a window of the query mode. There's a menu item Scripting/Run Script, but it doesn't seem to actually do anything. Surely there must be some application of the scripts section of the model beyond just storing SQL text?
Running arbitrary SQL code during forward engineering or synchronization is not possible. The only code that gets executed is the sql to create the objects and to fill tables with data specified in the Inserts section of the table editor.
Running an sql script in general is of course possible and also trivial. Simply open a connection to your server (you should have one created on the home screen, if not do this first). Then in the editor toolbar there's a button to open a script. Use that to open the file (if you have a separate sql file). If you want to run code that is stored in the model (as SQL file) you have to copy/paste it over.
I have a repeating problem that just feels so basic yet I cannot solve it nor can I find a solution online. Really hoping someone has something simple.
I have multiple situations where I have relatively large tables stores in Postgres (v8.4) and I want to be able to easily display them for my testers to review. The tables always have character varying fields that go well beyond the 255 max that Access wants to display in a Text field; it should become a Memo field. The data also has every possible separator imaginable already in it (tab, carriage return, semi colon, pipe, etc) and extracting it to Excel or such will never work smoothly. The easiest thing WOULD be using ODBC to link the table into an Access DB and viewing it there ... except that when I link or import, Access translates the field to Text. I've tried settings on the ODBC, but nothing can get those Fields to be Memo.
I'll take a way to extract to Excel cleaner, to view it in Access better .. just anything that gets me the entire table in a low level user friendly way to consistently get a table like that to a place they can review it. Suggestions?
Better late than never..
I just ran into this problems with Access 2010 and Postgres 9.1. I found a setting in the Postgres ODBC driver settings that you have to change. In the ODBC Data Source Administrator, select the datasource that you setup and click the 'Configure...' button.
Click the 'Datasources' button.
Uncheck the 'Text as LongVarChar' checkbox
In Access, you may have to delete the linked tables and re-add them. I tried relinking and one table updated properly and one did not. After deleting are re-adding, I had both working.
Try setting text datatype for all columns that you want to have Memo Data Type. I checked that with PostgreSQL 9.0 (64 bit), psqlodbc_09_00_0310 (32 bit, so I created User DSN under C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe) and as I see all columns wit text type become Memo, as opposite to characted(6) column that has Text Data Type in Access.
In T-SQL (Microsoft SQL 2008), how can I make a new database which will have the same schemas, tables, table columns, indexes, constraints, and foreign keys, but will not contain any data from the original database?
Note: making a full copy, then removing all data is not a solution in my case, since the database is quite big, and such full copy will spend too much time.
See here for instructions: How To Script Out The Whole Database In SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008
In SQL Management Studio, right click on the database and select "Script database as"
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178078.aspx
You can then use the script to create an empty one.
Edit : OP did say 2008
I use liquibase for this purpose. Just point liquibase to a different server and it will use your changelog to bring the second database up to date, schema wise. It has the added benefit that the changelog file gets stored in source control and so I can have tagged versions of it, allowing me to restore a database to what a specific version of my app is expecting.