On 5 June 2012 05:59, Luca Matteis <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello all, > > I have a scenario where I'm working with a friend of mine that > maintains a bunch of spatial data in a MS Access database. I want to > put this data online, as a web-site, and allow people to query it > using an interface and a RESTful API. So I thought CouchDB + GeoCouch > would be perfect for this. > > The issue is, how do I upload the MS Access data to my online Couch > instance? I want the process to be seamless - in the sense that my > friend will continue making modifications to his MS Access db, and > then he should "upload" it to the couch using some tool. > > Do I need to write extra code to parse the MS Access into JSON and > then upload that to my couch? Or is there an easier way? Dunno, maybe > upload it the MS Access as an attachment and parse it with client side > JavaScript?
The trite answer would be to rewrite the Access DB into Couch with a nice couchapp front end for your friend's local copy, & then summon replication to keep a public web version updated. More practically I think you'll need 2 things; #1 map the MS Access relational model into doc oriented JSON #2 set up an export that uses this map to transform that data You're not the first person to look at Access->JSON: There's a tool to dump a DB into JSON - https://s3.amazonaws.com/divconq/bin/jsonutils/JSONUtils_dotnet_v1001.zip And the authors wrote a series of blog posts on it: http://www.divconq.com/2010/export-a-microsoft-access-database-to-json/ There will also be libraries to do this via ODBC for python perl ruby etc. Depending on data complexity it might be quicker to roll your own. > Also the MS Access is quite large: ~2gb Large for Access, not for Couch. A+ Dave
