You might want to look at the mdbtools package that I wrote about in MUUGlines a few months ago, it is a Unix application that can read from Access databases directly. You might be better off exporting the data with that rather than Access directly. I used it to import a table with 3/4 million records into mysql (I took the lazy way out and just used some scripts to alter the text file into a bunch of sql commands).
shawn
On 12-Jul-04, at 10:59 PM, John Lange wrote:
This really isn't a Unix question directly so I apologize for that. However, I have a feeling that others here might have done something like this.
I have a client who would like their data converted from Access to mySQL. I'm using PHP to do the import because it plays so nice with mySQL and I'm making some changes to the data while it is being imported. So far so good, we are 90% there.
The problem is, Access does not export to a valid CSV format. Specifically, if there are any text or memo fields in Access that happen to contain CR/LF Access does not strip them or escape them in any way. The results in a CSV file with end of line markers in the middle of data fields.
At this point nothing I've found will import these files. Excel, OpenOffice, even Access itself all treat the CR/LF as an end of record marker even if it is enclosed in quotes.
I'm not doing the data exporting from Access and I'm not that familiar with Access. Is there an option to strip CR/LF during export?
Any other suggestions on how to clean this data?
Thanks
-- John Lange
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