Reading data from a Microsoft Access 2003 database

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Wed, 2010-05-19 at 02:28 -0700, Jimoid wrote:
> Hi All,
> I use Ubuntu 64 bit and need to develop a programme (ideally in
> Python) to work on data that is contained in a Microsoft Access 2003
> database. I do not need to modify the database, simply read a few
> columns of data from some tables.
> Google hasn't been able to offer me a suitable solution to this

Google is a poor way to look for such things.  It is better to go to
Freshmeat / SourceForge or PyPI directly.

Try <http://freshmeat.net/search?q=microsoft+access&submit=Search>

mdbtools is your best bet unless you are willing to pay for the EasySoft
drivers.  I've had mixed success with mdbtools;  if all you need to do
is extract data their ODBC driver will probably work.

If you are willing to use Jython (Python on the JVM) you have a *lot*
more options for this kind of thing.

> problem, and although there are some references to this problem in the
> archives of this group, they are mainly very old and I wonder if there
> is anything more recent that members could suggest to me?
> Python would be my language of choice, however if someone has any
> other suggestions then I'm open to ideas.
-- 
Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam at whitemice.org> LPIC-1, Novell CLA
<http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com>
OpenGroupware, Cyrus IMAPd, Postfix, OpenLDAP, Samba