JDBC thin Drivers for MS Access (no ODBC), any freeware, opensourceavailable?

Hello

I am looking for a JDBC thin driver for MS Access. Currently I found
only commercial ones which costs around 300 to 500 USD. Does anybody
know some freeware, opensource packages?

many thanks regards
Mark

joes wrote:
> I am looking for a JDBC thin driver for MS Access. Currently I found
> only commercial ones which costs around 300 to 500 USD. Does anybody
> know some freeware, opensource packages?

I don't know what you mean by a "thin" driver, but to my knowledge the only
available free JDBC driver for MS Access is the JDBC-ODBC driver, with Access
as an ODBC source.

Then of course there's the fact that Access is a very weak database engine.
Very weak. Why not use Derby (Java DB) or Postgres or any of the host of
actually worthy, free RDBMSes that actually work?

--
Lew

joes wrote:
> Hello
>
> I am looking for a JDBC thin driver for MS Access. Currently I found
> only commercial ones which costs around 300 to 500 USD. Does anybody
> know some freeware, opensource packages?
>
> many thanks regards
> Mark

The term "thin driver" was made up by Oracle to distinguish their type
IV driver that implements their network protocol directly in Java from
the type II driver that uses the underlying OCI client software
available on the client machine.

Since Access is not an actual server and thus does not implement aan
actual network-level protocol it is not possible to create a type IV
driver for Access. This leaves two options: a type I driver which wraps
ODBC (as the standard JdbcOdbc driver does) or a type III driver which
comes with a database proxy that does implement a network protocol and
uses a type I driver (or another type III driver if you really want to
make things complicated) to connect to the actual Access back end.

If left with any choice you should ditch Access and use a proper
database. If you want to go all Java you could look at Derby. I
personally prefer using PostgreSQL (which comes with a type IV JDBC
driver) for database applications big and small.

Best regards,

Silvio Bierman

In article
<1e90506c-e444-4e76-83f0-9329d4a9903f@j22g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
joes <joes@bluewin.ch> wrote:

> Hello
>
> I am looking for a JDBC thin driver for MS Access. Currently I found
> only commercial ones which costs around 300 to 500 USD. Does anybody
> know some freeware, opensource packages?
>
> many thanks regards
> Mark

I'm not sure what you mean by "thin" driver, but you should be able to
get by perfectly well with the one that's built into the JDK. I've been
using it for quite some time with Access, and it doesn't require any DSN
in the Windows ODBC control panel since you can use a relative or
absolute path to the Access file in the jdbc.url.

We use this:

jdbc.drivers=sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver
jdbc.url=jdbcdbcriver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=<path>

jdbc.username and jdbc.password are optional.

In the jdbc.url, you can use a complete path to the MDB file, or you can
use one relative to user.dir.

= Steve =
--
Steve W. Jackson
Montgomery, Alabama

Lew <lew@lewscanon.com> wrote:
>Then of course there's the fact that Access is a very weak database engine.
>Very weak. Why not use Derby (Java DB) or Postgres or any of the host of
>actually worthy, free RDBMSes that actually work?
Access is unsurpassed as a multi-database front end for application
programming. It is not surprising that the underlying database engine
may have been used without considering its weaknesses. Transferring an
Access database to Derby but continuing to use Access as a front end
is not easy and requires using the IBM DB2 ODBC drivers
<http://profectus.com.au/ee_cloudscape.html>. The Postgres ODBC
drivers may make the transition easier but Postgres mandates a
client-server model that may not suit the OP.

On Jul 15, 9:48*am, David Segall <da...@address.invalid> wrote:
> Lew <l...@lewscanon.com> wrote:
> >Then of course there's the fact that Access is a very weak database engine.
> >Very weak. *Why not use Derby (Java DB) or Postgres or any of the hostof
> >actually worthy, free RDBMSes that actually work?
>
> Access is unsurpassed as a multi-database front end for application
> programming.

I beg to differ. Access is one of the weakest front ends for multi-
or single-database application programming that I've ever
encountered. It's quirky, unstable, proprietary and non-portable. It
requires that one use its own bizarre, non-compliant version of
"SQL". It is not scalable. It doesn't support professional
development practices very well at all. In short, it sucks.

FoxPro and VB are both far better, and IDEs like NetBeans and Eclipse
are superior to Access out of the box.

--
Lew

joes wrote:
> I am looking for a JDBC thin driver for MS Access. Currently I found
> only commercial ones which costs around 300 to 500 USD. Does anybody
> know some freeware, opensource packages?

Never heard of such.

MS really should provide a decent JDBC driver for Jet.

Arne

Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> joes wrote:
>> I am looking for a JDBC thin driver for MS Access. Currently I found
>> only commercial ones which costs around 300 to 500 USD. Does anybody
>> know some freeware, opensource packages?
>
> Never heard of such.
>
> MS really should provide a decent JDBC driver for Jet.
>
> Arne


You're not holding your breath for that, are you???
AL

AL wrote:
> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> joes wrote:
>>> I am looking for a JDBC thin driver for MS Access. Currently I found
>>> only commercial ones which costs around 300 to 500 USD. Does anybody
>>> know some freeware, opensource packages?
>>
>> Never heard of such.
>>
>> MS really should provide a decent JDBC driver for Jet.
>
> You're not holding your breath for that, are you???

Nope.

Arne

conrad@lewscanon.com wrote:

>On Jul 15, 9:48*am, David Segall <da...@address.invalid> wrote:
>> Lew <l...@lewscanon.com> wrote:
>> >Then of course there's the fact that Access is a very weak database engine.
>> >Very weak. *Why not use Derby (Java DB) or Postgres or any of the host of
>> >actually worthy, free RDBMSes that actually work?
>>
>> Access is unsurpassed as a multi-database front end for application
>> programming.
>
I worded that very badly partly because I thought that "database front
end" meant a tool used to examine databases like SQL Workbench or IBM
Data Studio. A web search showed me that the term can mean anything at
all. The multi-database part was because Access can be used with any
database that has an ODBC driver. The "application programming" part
was to distinguish it from tools that can be used to administer a
database.
>I beg to differ. Access is one of the weakest front ends for multi-
>or single-database application programming that I've ever
>encountered. It's quirky, unstable, proprietary and non-portable. It
>requires that one use its own bizarre, non-compliant version of
>"SQL". It is not scalable. It doesn't support professional
>development practices very well at all. In short, it sucks.
I agree with you according to your perfectly reasonable interpretation
of what I wrote.
>FoxPro and VB are both far better, and IDEs like NetBeans and Eclipse
>are superior to Access out of the box.
The tools you mention do not provide an easy way of modifying a
database in a simple spreadsheet view, producing ad-hoc reports and
giving non-programmers a reasonable chance of writing a query for
themselves. Hence my response to Lew explaining why Access may have
been chosen originally. Since the OP posted in a Java group we can
assume he knows not to use Access VBA as a programming language.