Non Access Databases

[Kevin O'Connell]

I'm looking to use Access Report generation capability to write queries and reports for a number of 'disparate' databases.

Does any know where I can find good reference material so that I can learn better how to manipulate non-Access data into a format that Access likes.

e.g. Today I imported the tables from an Omnis Studio datafile. ODBC worked fine but all I have is tables with no Relationship data. The data is from an very good ERP system called Caliach but I'm struggling to understand how to make the data of use to Access so that I can produce reports with it.

Looking through the Omnis Studio liturature it talk about indexes and keys. All table fields in the application are unique or which there are 2,500.

HELP

 

[neffs]

I used a database called Sculptor for a long time. When I started using Access, I needed to convert some of my Sculptor datafiles to Access. Usually what I do is dump all the data into a comma delimited or some other type of text file. There have been times when I had to write a report program in Sculptor that would print out all the data and then insert commas between the data. Then I would print the report to a file instead of to the printer. I could then go into the file with a text editor and cut out all the fluff so I just had a text file. I had to do it this way because sculptor did some encoding of dates and numbers and I could avoid decoding these fields by using a report that would print them as text. Then you set up a datafile in Access that matches the fields in the text file. Set your relationships in this data file and import the text file. Works pretty well. I have used qbasic to mainpulate the text files sometimes to get them to be just right before I import them.

Sam Neff

 

[Matt Brown]

From my experience with exporting data out of databases you only ever seem to get the raw table data and not the relationship information.

i.e. i have exported an access db into a mySQL db, the relationship information in access is not exported out, basically i had to look at all of the indexes and PKs and FKs and figure out the schema of the db, what it was doing in the real world, and hook it all back up again using sql.

Sorry if this is not really helpful to you but i thought i would mention what my experiences are on db conversions.

Basically hard work....

Matt

 

[AncientOne]

I convert data from Impromptu reports for use in Access97. I find that most programs allow you to save in .dbf format, which is fully supported by Access. Of course, it doesn't handle your original relationships, but import routines allow you to specify indexes and keys and if you have a schematic of the relationships., they are not difficult to re-establish manually after import.