MDB databases are files produced by the Microsoft 'Jet' database engine. They are used in a variety of Microsoft products such as Money, Project, IIS, and Exchange as well as Accpac's Simply Accounting and Fog Creek's CityDesk, but most importantly, it is used as the format for Microsoft Access databases.
<dl><aname="versions"></a><dt><b>1.5 What Jet Databases does MDB Tools support?</b></dt><dd>
MDB Tools supports Jet version 3.0 and 4.0 databases. It does not, and probably never will support Jet 2.0. I'm looking into adding support for MSDE databases, and if anyone wants to send some sample databases in that format, I'd be very interested.
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<dl><aname="roadmap"></a><dt><b>1.6 Is there a roadmap?</b></dt><dd>
Post it to the sourceforge project page so it gets tracked and send a note to the list so we can work it out. I may request details about or a copy of your database. Any database sent will be kept confidential.
Join the mailing list, it's very low traffic at the time of this writing.
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If you are a programmer, start with the debugger in gmdb2 to get a feel for the database layout. Read the HACKING file included in the distribution.
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We are currently looking for corrupted Access databases to help with developing recovery tools. If you have them, I will even extract the usable data from them for you for free. ;-)
I, like many free software others, enjoy getting postcards from where users live. If you're a happy MDB Tools user (or even a disgruntled one, doesn't really matter) and want to drop me a postcard with a picture of the place you live, email <ahref="mailto:brian@nospam.bruns.com">me</a> for my snail-mail address. Come on, you know you want to!
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<dl><aname="writing"></a><dt><b>1.11 When will MDB Tools support writing?</b></dt><dd>
Writing to MDB files is a quite a bit more complicated than simply reading. Some preliminary support is available in the CVS version, this includes under-the-covers things like building rows, adding rows to tables, tracing the index chain to the row, and some work on index writes. These are the nuts and bolts of write support; the big thing left is the allocation of new pages and splitting full pages on inserts. When will this be done? I don't commit to timelines, but the next release (0.7) will have some usable, though not complete, write support.
