Databases
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    <p>Yes, you can talk to any ODBC database from Python, and that should include Access. You'll want the "windows" version of Python (which includes stuff like ODBC) from ActiveState.</p> <p>I'd be more worried about the "millions of rows" in Access, it can get a bit slow on retrieval if you're actually using it for relational tasks (that is, JOINing different tables together).</p> <p>I'd also take a look at your 50 column tables — sometimes you need 50 columns but more often it means you haven't decomposed your data sufficiently to get it in normal form.</p> <p>Finally, if you use Python to read and write an Access database I don't know if I'd count that as "learning Access". Really learning Access would be using the front end to create and maintain the database, creating forms and reports in Access (which would not be available from Python) and programming in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).</p> <p>I really like SQLite as an embedded database solution, especially from Python, and its SQL dialect is probably "purer" than Access's.</p>
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    1. POIs it possible to store data from Python in Access file?
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    1. USLarry Lustig
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    1. POIs it possible to store data from Python in Access file?
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    1. COI would then use various queries to work with the data. The point is, I put the data into Access and then I use Access to deal with it. And, I might use some VBA. I know VBA for Excel and want to learn it for Access. But, as you mention, it'd probably be really slow. That's why I thought of SAS also. I don't know much, but I have heard it's good at handling large sets of data. And, can you give me a very basic idea of how I would put the data into these programs?
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    2. COAccess might work, it's not (quite) as bad as it's often made out to be. You would use it the same way you use any database connection in Python: You import the Python module (eg, pyodbc); you create a connection object (passing in a string that specifies the ODBC driver and database file); from the connection object you create a cursor object, and you use the cursor object to execute SQL parameterized statements on the database.
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      1. USLarry Lustig
    3. COI'm unfamiliar with any Access performances issues related to "relational tasks". This does not conform to the reality I've experienced working with Jet/ACE over the past 15 years. JOINs are relatively expensive in all databases (particular OUTER joins), so I don't see it as much of a problem. 100s of thousands of rows are fine in Access. Millions might be a problem, but not because of performance so much as because of the hard limit of 2GBs on file size. But it actually depends on the size of the rows in the table. I've got a test database with over 7 million rows.
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      1. USDavid-W-Fenton
 

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