[olug] Samba

[Jay Hannah]

On May 18, 2004, at 10:30 PM, Daniel Linder wrote:
> <TANGENT DIRECTION='veering off course wildly'>
> I wonder if someone has thought of writing a program that could emulate
> the layout of the MS-Access MDB file?  A special file (a "named pipe")
> could be put in place of the real .MDB file, and then that special file
> could be an executable that does the queries on its own and returns the
> values as MS-Access expects.  Might make a neat hack since it could 
> have
> option of being the middle-man between a shrink-wrapped MS-Access based
> program and a "real" back-end database like 
> MySQL/Postgres/Oracle/MS-SQL,
> etc.)

I don't know how this would work. When MS-Access the program opens an 
.mdb binary it doesn't do it via a friendly API. It opens it as a 
proprietary data structure that only MS knows (shhh!) and starts 
directly jacking with the internal goo* of the binary. I don't think 
you could man-in-the-middle it.

I'm not sure why you'd try, either, since MS-Access will happily 
connect to any ODBC data source, and ODBC is an "open" standard you 
could write to... -ponder- ODBC is an open standard, isn't it?

j
Omaha MS-Access Mongers: http://///.....

* Yes, I am a senior MS engineer on the MS-Access team. Can't you tell 
by my wiz-bang lingo?