Quipu JDBC connection to MS Access

There are several ways to connect to a MS Access database from Java, like the low-level MS Access library called Jackcess: http://jackcess.sourceforge.net/

The downside is that most Java applications that support heterogeneous connections have a default built-in procedure to connect and open the database. Most of the time, the "getSchemanames" function is called and this one doesn't function as expected with MS Access. Quipu uses this method also.

Therefore, a connection can be made in the following way, but results in an error when retrieving the schema names during reverse engineering with Quipu from MS Access

1) JDBC to ODBC bridge

Create a connection to the MS Access database d:\test.mdb using a native and DSN-less JDBC to ODBC bridge:

Manage connection types:
Add a new connection type:

name= ms access jdbc
type= jdbc
database or file delimiter=
database or file required= false
jdbc port delimiter= :
jdbc default port=
jdbc driver= sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver
url type= jdbc:odbc:Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};DBQ=

Manage connections:
Add a new connection:

name: ms access jdbc
database= test.mdb
hostname= d
port= /

Notes:

• The url type above is for Java x64 and MS Access x64. If Java x32 is used, then the url type= jdbc:odbc:Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=
• No additional jdbc driver (jar file) needs to be installed, because the driver is embedded in the Java JRE runtime

There is an alternative method:

2) UCanAccess

It is a open source database driver written by Marco Amadei that behaves identical to the JDBC to ODBC bridge, but
- doesn't use ODBC
- handles the getschemanames call, using a default "PUBLIC" schema

Download it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ucanaccess

To use it with Quipu:
- Extract the jar files from the \lib folder in the zip file to Quipu's \webapps\qp\WEB-INF\lib folder
- Sort files by name and make sure no duplicates exist, e.g. hsqldb and hsqldb-1.8.0 is not allowed.
- Remove the duplicate with the lowest versionnumber. In the case of hsqldb, which has no versionnumber: keep the one from the UCanAccess zipfile

Manage connection types:

Add a new connection type:
name= ucanaccess
type= jdbc
database or file delimiter=
database or file required= false
jdbc port delimiter= :
jdbc default port=
jdbc driver= net.ucanaccess.jdbc.UcanaccessDriver
url type= jdbc:ucanaccess://

Manage connections:

Add a new connection:
name: ucanaccess
database= test.mdb;showschema=true
hostname= d
port= /

Notes:

- The "showschema=true" property bypasses the getSchemanames error