Friday, September 2, 2011

Using SQL Power Software with MS Access, .csv, flat file, spreadsheets, etc.

Lately, many people have been emailing us at SQL Power Software, asking how to access flat files instead of databases - so I thought I'd take a minute to talk about the subject.

The bad news is that SQL Power software does not support flat file access out of the box. (SQL Power Architect, Wabit and DQguru are high-performance data tools, designed to work with large, industrial-size databases and data models - not excel files.)

HOWEVER: the good news is that since we use JDBC for data access, you can in fact connect to ANY data source, providing you have a working JDBC driver for that data source.

For example: want to connect to a .csv file? Just search for a "csv JDBC driver".

As we don't do a lot of flat-file work ourselves, we'd love to hear about your experiences with these situations. (Especially if you've come across a particularly good JDBC driver for a certain flat file type, so we can recommend it to others.)

For more on this topic, see the SQL Power Frequently Asked Questions:
Spreadsheets & Flat Files
Microsoft Access JDBC-ODBC bridge
Configuring JDBC Drivers