Access to MySQL conversion and synchronization.

DBConvert & DBSync for Access and MySQL is a cross-database migration software for data conversion and synchronization between Microsoft Access (.MDB or .ACCDB) and MySQL databases.

Why convert Microsoft Access database to MySQL?

Scaling MS Access databases to an enterprise-level is often demanded when there are not enough Access database engine capabilities.

Converting Access to MySQL is one of the most popular ways to upsize an old Access Database.

1. Probably the essential reason to migrate Access data is to share it with others on the web.
2. The total size for an Access database is limited to about 2 Gb. Server databases routinely manage terabytes of data efficiently.
3. Microsoft Access is available for Windows PC only. Moving data from Access to MySQL opens an opportunity to share data between different platforms as MySQL historically is cross-platformed. It runs on most platforms, including UNIX, Linux, Windows, and macOS.

How to migrate Access to MySQL?

The following methods are quite suitable for this:

The old-fashioned manual way of database exporting from Access to MySQL:

1. Create your table structure on MySQL side:

   CREATE TABLE `foo`(`myid` INT, `mytext` VARCHAR(255), 
   `mydecimal` DECIMAL(8,4));
               

2. Save data from each table into a separate text file using the Microsoft Access export feature.

   1	Use these interesting	6.25
   2	fun facts to learn	32.8
   3	something new today.	4.76

3. Each text file can be imported into a MySQL database using LOAD DATA statement.

   LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/tmp/foo.txt'
   INTO TABLE foo FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t';        
       

   The rows get inserted:

   Query OK, 3 rows affected (0.00 sec)
   Records: 3 
   Deleted: 0 
   Skipped: 0 
   Warnings:0        
       

   Optionally you can use mysqlimport command-line utility.

4. Check the inserted records:

   mysql> select * from foo;
   +------+----------------------+-----------+
   | myid | mytext               | mydecimal |
   +------+----------------------+-----------+
   |    1 | Use these interesting|    6.2500 |
   |    2 | fun facts to learn   |    32.8000|
   |    3 | something new today. |    4.7600 |
   +------+----------------------+-----------+
   3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
               

This is the most difficult and time consuming method of importing data to MySQL from Access.

Using ODBC connection from Access to MySQL.

Follow the quick steps listed here:

1. Configure a new ODBC DSN connection if it doesn't already exist (refer to this manual)

2. Inside Access database, click on the table you like to export, click on the file menu, then go to export and enter the name for the exported table.

3. Select the ODBC connection you just created or choose the existing one from the list.

MS Access will connect to a MySQL server and export the data from a specified table to the target MySQL database.

Go here for a detailed manual.

While both of the above methods work, we can suggest a better solution.

DBConvert and DBSync software automate the process of data migration from Access to MySQL and reduce manual work.

Why use DBConvert software?

Our converters are designed to migrate and synchronize large and complex databases. Data can be migrated between local and remote databases as:

• MS Access (.MDB or .ACCDB)
• MySQL
• MariaDB
• Percona
• Amazon RDS | Aurora
• Google Cloud SQL
• Azure Database for MySQL

Queries conversion from Access to MySQL, MariaDB, and Percona views is available.

The software migrates indexes and relationships between tables, supports Unicode.

Many more useful options and features allow you to customize the conversion process and make it easier to get the preferred result.

Insert, Update, and Drop synchronization types give a strong consistency between Source and Target databases.

Try All-in-one DB migration and Sync software.