R: Read Tables in a Microsoft Access Database

mdb.get {Hmisc} | R Documentation

## Read Tables in a Microsoft Access Database

### Description

Assuming the `mdbtools` package has been installed on your system and is in the system path, `mdb.get` imports one or more tables in a Microsoft Access database. Date-time variables are converted to dates or `chron` package date-time variables. The `csv.get` function is used to import automatically exported csv files. If `tables` is unspecified all tables in the database are retrieved. If more than one table is imported, the result is a list of data frames.

### Usage

    mdb.get(file, tables=NULL, lowernames=FALSE, allow=NULL,
            dateformat='%m/%d/%y', mdbexportArgs='-b strip', ...)

### Arguments

`file` | the file name containing the Access database
`tables` | character vector specifying the names of tables to import. Default is to import all tables. Specify `tables=TRUE` to return the list of available tables.
`lowernames` | set this to `TRUE` to change variable names to lower case
`allow` | a vector of characters allowed by R that should not be converted to periods in variable names. By default, underscores in variable names are converted to periods as with R before version 1.9.
`dateformat` | see `cleanup.import`. Default is the usual Access format used in the U.S.
`mdbexportArgs` | command line arguments to issue to mdb-export. Set to `''` to omit `'-b strip'`.
`...` | arguments to pass to `csv.get`

### Details

Uses the `mdbtools` package executables `mdb-tables`, `mdb-schema`, and `mdb-export` (with by default option `-b strip` to drop any binary output). In Debian/Ubuntu Linux run `apt get install mdbtools`. `cleanup.import` is invoked by `csv.get` to transform variables and store them as efficiently as possible.

### Value

a new data frame or a list of data frames

### Author(s)

Frank Harrell, Vanderbilt University

### See Also

`data.frame`, `cleanup.import`, `csv.get`, `Date`, `chron`

### Examples

    ## Not run:
    # Read all tables in the Microsoft Access database Nwind.mdb
    d <- mdb.get('Nwind.mdb')
    contents(d)
    for(z in d) print(contents(z))
    # Just print the names of tables in the database
    mdb.get('Nwind.mdb', tables=TRUE)
    # Import one table
    Orders <- mdb.get('Nwind.mdb', tables='Orders')

    ## End(Not run)

[Package Hmisc version 4.7-0 Index]