Technique or tool for manually merging objects (not data) from 2 Access databases

Question

Access 2003.

I have two versions of an MS Access based application (data is in SQL Server, queries, forms, etc are in MS Access)

Are there any tools or techniques for merging the two versions? As a simple example, if I import all queries into DB_PRIMARY from DB_SECONDARY, non duplicated named queries will come in without a problem, but if a query already exists, the imported one will have "1" appended to the end (which makes sense). However, in the simplest case, I would rather just import and overwrite any existing objects.

Are there any tools or better techniques for managing this process?

Answer 1

Why not just use the import feature built into access? From there you can review the collisions where their are collisions in object names with the integer tacked onto the end for manual review and reconcilation (eg look for at a table named Parts and Parts1 and determine what action if any will be necessary).

If that's not sufficient there are a number of software vendors (like Altova DatabaseSpy) that have data comparision tools that are more robust and have operations to determine differences in schemas and data.

Answer 2

Open the second database in code as a DATABASE object, loop through the different types of objects, and IMPORT them one by one.

What version of MS Access are you using?

Answer 3

Jakkwylde's suggestion is simple and effective. However, if your database includes a huge number of objects to reconcile, or if this is something you anticipate needing to do repeatedly, look at Access' undocumented SaveAsText and LoadFromText methods.

They have been discussed several times here on Stack Overflow. Start with this Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Astackoverflow.com+saveastext+loadfromtext