MDB Tools

MDB Tools is a powerful software aimed at providing developers with the tools they need to document the MDB file format used in Microsoft's Access database package. Its goal is to offer a set of programs and applications to make that data available on other platforms. One of the main features of MDB Tools is the ability to export schema and data to other databases, including MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, PostgreSQL, among others, as well as a SQL engine for performing simple SQL queries.

The program has recently released version 0.5 which includes an updated GUI interface (screenshot available). Despite being a sparse but functional ODBC driver, it is included in the package. Currently, MDB Tools has read-only support for the Access 97 (Jet 3) and Access 2000/2002 (Jet 4) formats, except that Jet 3 support is more complete than Jet 4, and work is being done to extend the write support which is expected to be available in the 0.6 release.

MDB Tools requires several programs and libraries, including glib 2.0, readline, bison, flex, unixODBC, Gnome 2.0, libglade, and wordexp, to operate properly. The program is composed of three libraries, a set of command line utilities, and a graphical interface to provide users with various options to work with MDB Tools.

LibMDB is the lowest level library of MDB Tools, which reads and writes from the MDB file format, and also handles other functions of MDB Tools. Command line utilities are also included, allowing developers to use mdb files in shell scripting, extract data to another database and perform similar functions. Each program comes with its man page, and a brief description of its synopsis.

LibMDBSQL, on the other hand, is an SQL engine that provides a subset of the SQL query language to access MDB databases. It is used with the ODBC driver, the mdb-sql utility, and the query window in gmdb2.

MDB Tools comes with an ODBC driver, LibMDBODBC, which works with the unixODBC driver manager to allow MDB Tools to work with programs such as PHP and Perl via DBD::ODBC. The driver has a limited scope of coverage, but developers can contact the list in case of any specific problems, which can be resolved.

Finally, Gmdb2 offers a graphical interface that has a similar interface to Access, with a tabbed interface for each object type in the database, including tables, queries, forms, and an SQL Query window. It also has a file debugger useful for developers interested in examining the MDB file format's underlying structure.