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Microsoft Access read from linux python

Alan Kennedy alanmk at hotmail.com
Wed Oct 29 15:22:00 EST 2003 
[David ROBERT]
> I need to read data from a MS Access database.
> The program (reader) is installed on a linux box and
> is written in python langage.

Hmmm. What is "the program"? Is it a python script you have written?
Or that someone else has written and you must update? What is the
"reading" that it does? How does it do it currently? DOes it run on a
non-linux operating system?

A python client running on linux can access any database on any server
operating system if one can obtain an ODBC driver for that database.
Both server and client need to understand ODBC, which is a kind of
universal database protocol/API.

> The database is MS Access 2002 installed on a Win XP box
> networked with the linux box.

If you can get an ODBC "data source" set up for that database, then
you're half way there. On Win 2K (dunno about XP) Go to "Control
Panel"->"Administrative Tools"->"Data Sources (ODBC)", and add a "DSN"
for your MS Access database. There are security/privacy concerns
related to informed choice of "System DSN" vs. "User DSN", which I'll
leave for you to read up on.

> Is it possible for python/linux to read data from MS Access
> Database ?

Yes, if the linux client supports ODBC. It's also possible to make
modifications back to the database.

Python has a standardised database API called "DB-API", which has very
wide native support for a lot of different databases. A number of the
currently available DB-API modules also support ODBC, which you can
see on this page

http://www.python.org/topics/database/modules.html

As far as I'm aware, most or all of the modules that support ODBC will
run on linux.

> I've read a lot of things about mxODBC, iODBC and so on,
> but I'm still very confused, It looks like it is _not_
> possible.

Anything is possible. It's just a matter of effort ;-)

-- 
alan kennedy
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