[CLUE-Tech] Read MS Access files?

[David L. Willson]

I'm not certain this question has an end in sight.  The same question
can be posed for any binary format for which the reader has an
associated cost.

In all cases like this, my suggestion/solution is "rent one".  Example:
Yesterday, I needed to read a document that was in WordPerfect format. 
Not having my copy of WordPerfect for Linux handy, I emailed the file to
a Windows-using MS Office-having friend and had him down-save it to
"RTF, HTML, or even that contemptible MS Word format you are so fond
of".

If I had SQL Server files, Access files, Oracle files, or whatever, I
would do something similar.  It might cost, but data is data, and once
you get it out of the proprietary format, you need never go back.

One more thought:  When there are 'lots and lots' of files, it's cheaper
to go to a smart friend that can write a VBA script that will do "Save
as"'s automatically on a whole folder or tree of files, rather than a
not-so-smart friend who will have to process them individually.

oops, forgot my <rant> tags...

On Fri, 2004-04-09 at 08:22, David Anselmi wrote:
> Jef Barnhart wrote:
> > I don't know how much this will help you but it is a start
> > 
> > http://otn.oracle.com/pub/articles/gagne_access.html
> 
> The beginning of that strikes me as nonsense.
> 
> "One option would have been to purchase a copy of Microsoft Access and 
> create an application, but that would have involved locking ourselves 
> into the same proprietary mold that had gotten us into this mess in the 
> first place."
> 
> The crux of this article is: given an mdb file and no MS software, how 
> do we get the data out.  The author implies that Oracle is somehow more 
> open and more standard than Access.
> 
> So, given the files for an Oracle database and no Oracle software, how 
> do we get the data out?  Can it be done with Open Source?
> 
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