If you have the OGR_FDW we discussed in OGR FDW Windows first taste built with ODBC support, then you can access most any ODBC datasource from PostgreSQL. This is especially useful for Windows users. Two of the data sources I've been experimenting with are SQL Server and MS Access. In this article, I'll demonstrate how to connect to MS Access with PostgreSQL running on a windows box. I think there is an Access driver for Unix/Linux most robust utilizes java. I won't go there.
There are two ways you can specify an MS Access connection with OGR and by extension OGR FDW.
There is one big gotcha that affects many 64-bit windows users. So I'll highlight it here. Sadly I don't know an easy fix for this one. It's the same issue if you wanted to query an MS Access database or Excel file from SQL Server 64-bit. Luckily at least as far as ogr_fdw is concerned, ogr_fdw doesn't need ODBC to query excel files, so you are only screwed if you need to connect to MS Access. SQL Server 64-bit folks are doubly screwed since SQL Server needs the driver for both MS Access and Excel :). Of course a SQL Server user could do something somewhat Rube Goldbergish and install PostgreSQL, create a Foreign table to Excel from PostgreSQL, and then do a linked server or openquery call to the Foreign table excel file from SQL Server (I should chart this :) ). So here it is:
If you want to query MS Access from a 64-bit PostgresSQL, you will either need MS Access 64-bit or the freely available MS Access 2013 64-bit runtime or runtimes MS Access 2010 64-bit version. Make sure you install the 64-bit version. If you for some reason you have 32-bit Office installed on your server and you have PostgreSQL 64-bit, you are kinda screwed since the 64-bit runtime will not install on a machine with 32-bit Office. I should also add that MS Access 2013 runtime requires Windows 2008 R2 or above. So if you have Windows 2008 or lower, you need to use the MS Access 2010 or lower runtime.
Another bit of a gotcha, if you have your MS Access database on a network share, yes UNCs of the form \\myserver\myshare\myfolder\mydatabase work fine, if and only if your PostgreSQL server service account can access that path. That means generally you need to run your PostgreSQL service under a network account or at least an account with same user and password as is on the other server.
If you have the newer MS Access drivers and want to be able to use a DSNLess connection for MDB files, and aren't running GDAL trunk, you can get away by creating a text file with a .reg extension that has contents below and then right click install. You want to first verify the ACEODBC.dll path matches what you have installed. In my case I have the MS access 2013 64-bit runtine installed on my server. If you are using 32-bit this is a non-issue since Windows ships with the 32-bit MS Access driver.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBCINST.INI\Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)] "UsageCount"=dword:00000003 "Driver"="C:\\PROGRA~1\\COMMON~1\\MICROS~1\\OFFICE15\\ACEODBC.DLL" "Setup"="C:\\PROGRA~1\\COMMON~1\\MICROS~1\\OFFICE15\\ACEODBC.DLL" "APILevel"="1" "ConnectFunctions"="YYN" "DriverODBCVer"="02.50" "FileUsage"="2" "FileExtns"="*.mdb" "SQLLevel"="0" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBCINST.INI\ODBC Drivers] "Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)"="Installed"
When you go to ODBC manager in Control Panel (or via the paths I mentioned) -- you should see a new entry in Drivers section.
You can use the ogr_fdw_info tool to query MS Access (good old Northwind which I snagged an old version from http://www.geeksengine.com/article/northwind.html without a registered DSN with something like this:
ogr_fdw_info -s "C:/fdw_data/northwind.mdb"
And you'll get an output like this:
Layers: Categories Customers Employees Order Details Orders Products Shippers Suppliers Alphabetical List of Products Category Sales for 1997 Current Product List Customers and Suppliers by City Employee Sales by Country Invoices Invoices Filter Order Details Extended Order Subtotals Orders Qry Product Sales for 1997 Products Above Average Price Products by Category Quarterly Orders Quarterly Orders by Product Sales by Category Sales by Year Ten Most Expensive Products
This SQL Statement using the hack function I mentioned in prior article works in this case to:
SELECT ogr_fdw_sql_table('C:/fdw_data/northwind.mdb');
To get the Orders table, structure do this
C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.3\bin>ogr_fdw_info -s "C:/fdw_data/northwind.mdb" -l "Orders"
Which would output something like this (which I change myserver to Northwind):
CREATE SERVER northwind
FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER ogr_fdw
OPTIONS (
datasource 'C:/fdw_data/northwind.mdb',
format 'ODBC' );
CREATE SCHEMA northwind;
CREATE FOREIGN TABLE northwind.orders (
fid integer,
geom bytea,
orderid integer,
customerid varchar,
employeeid integer,
orderdate timestamp,
requireddate timestamp,
shippeddate timestamp,
shipvia integer,
freight real,
shipname varchar,
shipaddress varchar,
shipcity varchar,
shipregion varchar,
shippostalcode varchar,
shipcountry varchar )
SERVER northwind
OPTIONS ( layer 'Orders' );
CREATE FOREIGN TABLE northwind.products
(fid integer ,
geom bytea ,
productid integer ,
productname character varying ,
supplierid integer ,
categoryid integer ,
quantityperunit character varying ,
unitprice real ,
unitsinstock integer ,
unitsonorder integer ,
reorderlevel integer ,
discontinued character varying )
SERVER northwind
OPTIONS (layer 'Products');
SELECT ogr_fdw_sql_table('C:/fdw_data/northwind.mdb','Orders'); to get below output.Sadly trying to read the table structure with my hack function from within PostgreSQL just returns NULL. Also note the unwelcomed geom column (which was represented as type geometry) and I changed to bytea, tagging along for the ride. To be fair MS Access databases are structures repurposed by GIS companies like ESRI and GeoMedia, so OGR blindly treats them as having spatial content. There is actually spatial content in the form of raster in the categories table, but that sadly has got an OLE wrapper around it that would require stripping the OLE header before you can use the PostGIS raster functions on them.
There is a current issue with the ogr_fdw driver that is can't handle timestamps for some reason so replace all timestamp with varchar. This is a similar issue with when connecting to SQL Server with ogr_fdw, though using the SQL Server 2008+ date type works and maps fine. I'll post new binaries once this issue is resolved. Cursory tests seem to suggest this timestamp issue is not limited to windows or ODBC though is more easily triggerable in this combination.
Upon learning about being able to query MS Access from PostgreSQL, Leo's first reaction and excitement.
You mean I can finally use all these cool PostgreSQL functions from within MS Access?Didn't quite know what he meant by that until I saw him in action. Paul -- here's a wrap-around for you, Leo style :)