Connect to a file geodatabse in MS Access?

AlfredBaldenweck · ‎10-16-2023

Bit of a reverse of a common question.

Is it possible to connect a file GDB to MS Access, either to feed data or to use it as an interface?

It seems like Access doesn't recognize file GDBs by itself, but I was thinking maybe using ODBC?

Develop an ODBC driver for the esri File Geodataba... - Esri Community

There was also this question, where someone says it'd be possible to make one using the API, but not sure if anyone ever did that FGDB ODBC driver? - Esri Community

MarceloMarques · ‎10-16-2023

Hello @AlfredBaldenweck

You will find the answer to your questions and a lot more details in this ArcGIS Blog article.

It's Not Personal: A quick history of the geodatabase and why personal geodatabases are not in ArcGI...

| Marcelo Marques | Esri Principal Product Engineer | Cloud & Database Administrator | OCP - Oracle Database Certified Professional | "About: In 1992, I embarked on my journey with Esri Technology, and since 1997, I have been working with ArcSDE Geodatabases, right from its initial release. Over the past 33 years, my passion for Spatial Databases and GIS data has become a central part of my career.." | “ The mountains are calling and I must go.” – John Muir |

AlfredBaldenweck · ‎10-16-2023

Thank you for the response, however, that is the answer to the opposite question of what I asked, which is about using file GDBs in Access, not about using Access files in Pro.

MarceloMarques · ‎10-16-2023

There is no ODBC driver for file geodatabases therefore is not possible to integrate file geodatabases with Access out of the box and you will need to create some custom tool to be able to do this.

| Marcelo Marques | Esri Principal Product Engineer | Cloud & Database Administrator | OCP - Oracle Database Certified Professional | "About: In 1992, I embarked on my journey with Esri Technology, and since 1997, I have been working with ArcSDE Geodatabases, right from its initial release. Over the past 33 years, my passion for Spatial Databases and GIS data has become a central part of my career.." | “ The mountains are calling and I must go.” – John Muir |

MarceloMarques · ‎10-16-2023

You can explore alternatives like Safe Software FME Workbench and ArcGIS Pro Data Interoperability Extension to read file geodatabase data and synchronize data with an Access Database.

FME Transformer Reference Guide (safe.com)
List of Readers and Writers (safe.com)
ArcGIS Data Interoperability extension for Desktop—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

| Marcelo Marques | Esri Principal Product Engineer | Cloud & Database Administrator | OCP - Oracle Database Certified Professional | "About: In 1992, I embarked on my journey with Esri Technology, and since 1997, I have been working with ArcSDE Geodatabases, right from its initial release. Over the past 33 years, my passion for Spatial Databases and GIS data has become a central part of my career.." | “ The mountains are calling and I must go.” – John Muir |

Jeff-Reinhart

This is why MDB was great. It could be manipulated by arcpy editor and read in MS Access. But now it looks like arcpy.da.Editor will not work on MDBs (RuntimeError: The database was not found). Somebody tell me I am wrong please so I don't have to rewrite my MS Access based UI. Pretty please.

Jeff-Reinhart

Oh yeah!

pypyodbc

✔️

AlfredBaldenweck

Yeah, there isn't any Pro support for MDBs. Huge pain.

gdal, pyodbc, etc. will work just fine for "modern" MDBs, but will not work for MDBS created in Access 97. To my knowledge, ArcMap and Access 2006 are the only programs that open those anymore.

ScottMiller1234

I find myself drifting more and more toward QGIS as ESRI tries more and more to prioritize the whole data environment. It is common practice to integrate spatial and tabular data dynamically. It's the future. I can manage my spatial data now as geometry/geography data types in SQL Server, MySQL, Postgres, right along with all the other data. Heck, I can even use the .dbf of a shapefile dynamically with other, everyday platforms. I'm not interested in the huge footprint of a .gdb plus the inability to access and integrate the attributes of my layers dynamically. It's a two-fer, only the wrong direction. I'm not going to export .csv files and break the data chain, picking it up in some ETL process blah, blah, blah. Nope, just going to move on.