Lesson 3: Importing Tables

Microsoft Access recognizes Pervasive databases and their components through ODBC. One way to view and manipulate Pervasive data through Access is to create an imported table. When you create an imported table, Access creates a copy of the data; Access does not change the source data. In other words, when you make a change to an imported table, you can see the change in Access, but other users who connect to the source Pervasive data do not see the change. Importing is useful when you want to bring data into Access and use the data only in Access. Otherwise, linking is the preferred approach.

This lesson imports all the tables from the sample database.

To import tables from the sample database:

In the Demodata:Database window, go to the Tables tab and click New.

In the New Table dialog box, highlight Import Table and click OK.

In the Import dialog box, select ODBC Databases in the Files of Type field.

In the Select Data Source dialog box, go to the Machine Data Source tab, highlight the Demodata data source, and click OK.

Note
Choosing a data source from the Machine Data Source tab is very important. If you mistakenly choose a data source from the File Data Source tab, results are unpredictable.

In the Import Objects dialog box, click Select All and then OK.

Access creates imported tables for all the existing tables in the Pervasive sample database.

Note that Access uses different icons for linked and imported tables.