Hello all! I have an old program developed in MS Access and would like to convert it to Kexi somehow. The program on Windows is launched with Access.

Is there any way that Kexi can launch this program? I know my way around Ubuntu and the terminal, but not well versed on databases. Once you make something in Kexi how do you "run" it or "view" what you've made?

So far I am able to import the MDB file into Kexi and see all of the database data, but that is as far I have gone. The program was made by a relative years ago for my dad.

I myself am an Ubuntu only user for 6+ years now and have no intentions to touch Windows and am looking for a linux solution. My dad is also an Ubuntu user, hence why Im looking for a solution.

If Kexi cannot launch and run an MDB file, what else can I try? Anything browser based? Any tips or direction would be extremely helpful.

Thanks!

Fred

I spoke to my brother who originally made the program. I told him about Kexi and here is what he said. Does any of this make sense? Thanks.

This is how I would try to get them to work:

1. Stand alone setup - after import, look for an option where you designate which form object you want to open upon startup. It might be in the tools tab in the picture below. After you save that change, it re-start it and it should work.

2. Front end/back end setup - Do what I suggested for the stand alone setup to the "front-end" MDB file. After you do that, put the other file (table MDB file) where you want it to reside on the network. Now, open back up the "front end" file and look for an option that will allow you to "connect" to those tables in the other file. It looks like it could be in the "External data" tab in the picture below. For this setup, you may need to do these two tasks in the reverse order I just mentioned.

Kexi (nor any other FOSS app) cannot import anything but table designs and data for now. I guess it would be able - after reasonable fund-raising but we're not there now.

After importing your table design and data you would need to replicate the design of forms, queries, reports and maybe macros - all largely by hand. It's of course easier for the original author of the original MDB database than for others. Alternatively a professional could be hired.

From my experience I can say that after years of developing even small MDB database it can have a number of side effects or implicit rules included, that are hard to replicate because of specific behaviour of Access (note, this is not quite anyone's fault as there's no standard for databases, SQL isn't even one ultimate standard, not to mention forms...)

Being locked in Access is just a story of legacy apps.

A good (technical) start is to run Database Documenter on your MDB file (Database Tools tab -> Analyze group, click Database Documenter) and provide the result for someone who would want to help you.

Whether you'd pick to replicate the functionality in Kexi or any other tool (including handcrafted web pages) is another story.

Dziekuje Jarosław. I have something to go on now. So far, briefly searching the internet it might be possible to convert the4 MDB file to SQLite and go from there. My brother who created the program does not have the time to convert everything and create all new pages for the data.