I currently have a database in MySQL, which I'd like to import in MS Access.
Is it possible to do this while keeping all relationships intact (i.e. without exporting to .csv, or by using ODBC)?
I'm a noob in this area so any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
You need to solve two different problems:
Creating an empty MS Access database with a structure that matches the MySQL database structure.
Extracting the data from MySQL and loading it into MS Access.
This is not easy because different SQL databases offer different structural features, different datatypes, and so on. The more complex your use of MySQL is the more likely you'll run into some show-stopper during the conversion (for instance, Access doesn't support triggers at all). Conversely if you're using MySQL as a simple data store you may find the conversion fairly easy.
To get an MS Access database with the same structure as your MySQL database, your best bet is to find a database definition / diagramming tool that offers reverse engineering and supports both MySQL and MS Access. Use it to reverse engineer your MySQL database into a database diagram, then change the underlying database to MS Access and use the tool to generate a database.
Check out Dezign For Databases which (on paper, anyway) offers the features you would need to do this.
To pump the data across, there are any number of tools. This kind of operation is generically referred to as ETL (Extract, Translate, Load).
Do you mean SQL Server? A good starting point might be to check out SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), which can be used for transferring data around like that.
Google will also be helpful, check out the first result:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/237980
By the way, you said ".sql" in your question: a .SQL file is a script file, which could do anything from create a database, insert data, drop table, delete data, or given the right permissions, call system procedures and reboot a machine, format a drive, send an email.. Just for ref, .SQL files aren't the storage format used by SQL Server.
While you can script your database's schema into script files via something like SQLyog, you will find that the syntax varies enough from database to database (MySQL to Access, in your case) that you can't directly apply the scripts.
With much effort a conversion script could be created by editing the script (perhaps automated with a program, depending on the resulting script size). I think you would be better served using ODBC to copy the tables (and data) and then extracting and re-applying the relationships from the generated script by hand. Time consuming, but also a one time operation I would hope.
When both systems are the same database, there are tools that can do the comparison and script generation (TOAD for MySQL and RedGate Compare for Microsoft SQL), but they don't do cross database work (at least not the ones I am aware of).
If you create a ODBC DSN, you can use TransferDatabase to import from your MySQL database. You can do it manually with the GET EXTERNAL DATA command (or whatever it is in A2007/A2010) and see how well it works. It won't get all data types exactly right, but you could do some massaging and likely get it closer to what will work best.
Is there some reason you can't just link to the MySQL tables and use them directly? That is, why do you need to import into Access at all?
Access: run query. Just make sure to adapt the SQL code since every RDMS has its own sintaxis (despite SQL being an ANSI standard).
Related
I have an access database that connects to a vb6 application and this whole thing is connected between two computers via a shared network one running win 8 and other a win 7, and there is no internet involved in any sorta way nor should it be that is a requirement in fact
sorry I advance I have tried researching on the net but there is really short time and a lot of confusing material online
I am creating a WPF app connected to MySQL DB
now I have copied the access file and imported the contents of the DB in MySQL
things are a real mess in the imported DB so I am fixing it
what I am confused is how I am going to make it work there
do I go and install MySQL and do the whole process manually there, repeating all the steps and changes
is made
make a document that contains the code/script for all the changes I have made and run the data through
it, and is there even a way to implement that as a whole in a singular go
connect both databases together, i don't even know if this is possible
yes, in place of a simple "file share" of the Access file, you now are going to run some kind of SQL server system. In this case MySQL. But it could be PostgreSQL or any kind of "server" database.
That instance of "sql server" thus has to be setup, installed and you ensure that the "box" running that instance of MySQL also allows external connections (often by default the given computer firewall settings prevent this).
At that point, 2 or 10 different computers on that same network can now simply connect to the SQL server. The code of course is going to be VERY simular. You almost for sure used the oleDB provider for use with Access. However, you can use the ODBC provider, or even use the provider from MySQL. Those providers thus means you change the connect object, datareader object etc. However the "base" .net types such as row, or datatable, or dataset can remain as before (so you only change the provider). If you have a lot of code based on oleDB, then you could well consider to contine to use that oleDB provider code in .net, and thus you change the connection strings to now point to MySQL.
If you don't have a lot of code, then for sure do adopt the mySQL provider for .net. But as noted the least amount of changes would be to continue to use a oleDB provider for mysql, and that would suggest the least amount of code to be changed.
As for the msaccess data migration? Well, it not clear what tools and how you doing that now. But, once you transfer the data to the MySQL server (assuming you installed + setup my sql to run on one computer). The it is a simple matter to point your .net connection(s) in your code to Now MySQL as opposed to Acess. As a result, most if not all of your code logic for working with the tables can remain as before - but as noted you have to swap out the provider parts in .net
Now, if your REALLY lucky and the .net code used the ODBC provider? Then all you have to do is change your connection strings. And of course "some" SQL syntax in your code may have to be tweaked, as like Oracle, MS SQL server, postgreSQL, and MySQL?
Well, they all have some features and syntax that is different - this is especially in regards to date/time calculations, datediff() etc. But the general sql you have/had in your .net code should continue to run mostly un-changed against MySQL data tables.
As for how to migrate the data? I think that a really good tool is of course to use MS-Access. What you do is get MySQL up and running. Then use ms-access to open that database. You then add linked tables from MS-access to the MySQL tables.
At that point, you can now run append queries from Access to move/send the data to MySQL. It really depends on how many tables, and how many related tables are in that database. The more complex and the greater number of related tables in Access then the more the challenge to move such data up to MySQL.
Transferring Excel or a small or even big table is a breeze. (again, use MS Access and link to the tables on the sql server). However, where things can become messy is that if you have say 25 tables, and they are all related, many have cascade delete and say enforced parent to child relationships. So the more tables, and especially a larger number of related data tables, then the more work such a data migration task will become.
I think MS Access is a really good tool, since if you setup a connection to MySQL, then you can execute a transferDatabase commend in Access to send up one table to MySQL, and even all the columns and data types for those columns will be automatic created for you. So not only can Access transfer the data, but MORE valuable is it has the abilty to create the target tables on MySQL for you - and that will save you large amounts of time to build + setup the tables on MySQL.
So I'm moving from MS Access to MySQL:
In MS Access you can store certain INSERT, DELETE, and UPDATE queries as objects alongside your tables. Thus for anyone who don't understand computers that well, they can click on the objects and automatically run the queries to alter the master table for various business functions.
In MySQL, where and how do you store these queries, I seem to be only able to make tables. When I write a piece of code using the SQL editor, I can only save it to a remote location (such as my local desktop) and not onto the MySQL database, where it's accessible for my coworkers.
If you can't save it onto the server, how would I write a piece of code and execute it within the database that would be easily usable by others.
Thanks
The answer to this question is going to depend on your environment, your users, and your bandwidth to support any given solution. You are gaining a lot by making the switch from Access to MySQL, however you are losing some of the the WYSIWYG features. (e.g., Access forms that can bind directly to your data source.)
There are many approaches:
If your users are more advanced, simply having access to the database using MySQL Workbench may suffice. From there they would have access to run views, stored procedures, or to create their own custom queries.
Another option would be to script your objects using Python and provide a simple gui using TkInter. Python is generally thought of as an easy to use language; with built in suppport for MySQL and TkInter is its "default" interface.
Using the LAMP architecture is another largely popular paradigm using MySQL as the backend database.
There is also nothing stopping you from using Access to link to your MySQL db using MySQL as an external data source.
I hope this provides enough info to help you begin whittling down your options.
If I were to want to create a PHP function that does the same thing as the Export tab in phpMyAdmin, how could I do it? I don't know if there is a MySQL function that does this or if phpMyAdmin just builds the export file (in SQL that is) manually. Without shell access. Just using PHP.
I tried the documentation for mysqldump, but that seemed to require using the shell. I'm not quite sure what that even is -- maybe my question is: how do you use shell?
My silly idea is to allow non-technical users to build a site on one server (say a localhost) using MySQL then export the site, database and all, to another server (eg. a remote server).
I think I'm pretty clear on the Import process.
You can check the phpMyAdmin source code (an advantage of open-source software). Check the export.php script and the supporting functions in the libraries/export/sql.php script file.
In summary, what phpMyAdmin does is:
get a list of the tables in the given database (SHOW TABLES FROM...),
get the create query for each table (SHOW CREATE TABLE...),
parse it and extract column definitions from it,
get all data (SELECT * FROM...)
build a query according to column data.
I've written similar code for my own apps (for backup purposes, when the GPL license of phpMyAdmin doesn't allow me to use it), however I use DESCRIBE to get column definitions. I think they rather parse the SHOW CREATE TABLE output because contains more information than DESCRIBE output.
This way to generate SQL sentences requires a bit of care to handle the escaping but it allows for some flexibility, as you can convert types, filter or sanitize data, etc. It is also a lot slower than using a tool like mysqldump and you should take care of not consuming all available memory (write soon, write often, don't keep everything in memory).
If you will implement a migration process (from server to server) maybe it would be easier to do it with some shell scripting and calling mysqldump directly, unless you will do everything with PHP.
I want to create a desktop version of my mysql installation without having to setup a server on my machine.
I want to make use of MS Access' query designer so I can produce complicated queries.
I know I can produce an SQL file but I've no idea how to create an MS Access database from it ?
I'm not going to jump on the "Access sucks" bandwagon, though it can be very frustrating at times.
Worst case, You can start with a blank Access database (mdb file, since you specified pre-2007). Open the query designer & go to SQL view. Paste in one complete SQL statement (CREATE TABLE...), and run it. Fix any incompatibility errors, paste in the next (replacing the first), rinse, repeat. Be sure to do this in such order that any dependency "sources" get created before the dependents.
There may be a batch process available, but I don't know what it is offhand.
Moving from MySQL to something like Access is heading in the wrong direction.
If you need a server-less SQL installation or package as part of your distribution (which is a pretty common requirement these days since admins don't like users to install database servers on their machines), consider SQL Server Compact Edition (CE) or SQL Lite. They're both fully SQL compliant (unlike Access) and will cause you far fewer headaches than Access (which sucks). (Did I mention that Access sucks? Big time?)
SQL CE is a .NET assembly that runs in-process with your app, and is very easy to work with. Also, db objects you create will be upwards-compatibile with the full-blown SQL Server. It also works very, very well with Entity Framework if you're into ORMs.
I've heard praise for SQLite, but haven't worked with it. If you're not on .NET, this should be a good way to go.
Links:
SQL CE
SQLite
I don't know if this is a viable option, but if you can set up a DSN to point to your MySQL server, you can then use FILE | GET EXTERNAL DATA | IMPORT to import your MySQL tables into a blank MDB/ACCDB. It's a one-time operation, but I don't know that there's any other option here. You should get the option to import the table schema only and not schema+data. You may have to tweak data types in the resulting tables, since the MySQL data types won't necessarily map directly to Jet/ACE data types.
Then you can carry the MDB/ACCDB file anywhere you want.
I have a database (mdb file) that I am currently busy with. I would like to know if it is possible to generate MySQL code that would be used to create this database?
There are a couple of tools you can look at to try to do the conversion.
DataPump
Microsoft DTS (Nos Called SQL Server Integration Services)
Other option might be generate MySQL code from Access' DB MetaData you can access from JDBC, ODBC, ADO.NET or any other database access technology with metadata support. For this option you need to generate a piece of code (script). So it will only make sense if your access DataBase has a lot of table with a lot of columns or if you are planning to do this task several times.
Of course, using one of the mentioned tools will be faster if it works.
You can certainly write DDL to create and populate a MySQL database from the work that you've already done on Microsoft Access. Just put it in a text file that you execute using MySQL batch and you're all set.
If you intend to keep going with developing both, you'll want to think about how you'll keep the two in synch.