Re: [mdb-dev] mdbtools doesn't like my Access database

[Barrie B. <bar...@nt...>]

On Tue, 2007-09-04 at 21:17 -0500, Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> I've got an Access 97 format database that's being used with a cash register 
> application (Micro Register). For some reason, mdbtools doesn't recognize it as 
> a valid Access database. I've tried upgrading it to Access 2000 and 2002, as 
> well as doing "Compact & Repair". Here's what I get when I try to play around 
> with it:
> 
> mal ~ # mdb-ver /tmp/microreg.mdb
> JET3
> mal ~ # mdb-schema /tmp/microreg.mdb
> File does not appear to be an Access database
> mal ~ # mdb-schema -S /tmp/microreg.mdb
> File does not appear to be an Access database
> 
> Now, if I export one table from this database into a blank Access 2000 database, 
> the new file can be read just fine by mdbtools. I tried just removing all the 
> tables except the one I exported from the original (thinking it was one of the 
> other tables that was causing problems), but mdbtools didn't like that, either.
> 
> I'd just do the one-time export and use that, but I need "real-time" 
> synchronization between this Access database and an e-commerce site I'm putting 
> together for the business that runs this cash register application. I've looked 
> into other solutions such as using an ODBC network gateway, but I can't find 
> anything that would work with perl or PHP in linux
> 
> If it helps, both 0.5 and 0.6_pre1 would segfault if I ran 'mdb-schema -S' on 
> the file, but a more recent CVS checkout (output above) fails a bit more 
> gracefully. I can also post a version of the database with just the single table 
> I'm interested in but that still fails with mdbtools. I assume anything done to 
> make mdbtools work with that database would also work with the original.
> 
> Thanks for any help that anyone can provide.
> 

Have you tried importing the entire microreg.mdb contents into a new
blank Access database, then renaming the files such that the new db
replaces the old in the application(obviously backing up the original
first)? I have used this method to repair corrupt Access databases in
the past, sometimes finding that mdbtools will extract data inaccessible
via MsAccess.

Barrie