In Visual Studio 2008 server explorer I see the Access database fine. I can view tables and data and I can even update the data. But I can't add new tables. Does VS 2008 not allow me to do this? Or is the security not right?
A:
I don't think you can do it in VS. You can open the .MDB inside MS Access and do the regular table / query creation. Do you have MS Access installed?
I don't think that MS added support and put a lot of work into anything except sql server integration, for obvious marketing reasons :( They have let access languish for a while as well. You can add a MySql ole source, or oracle, but that will just read the same as access. Since DDL is even more custom that queries, I doubt they hand coded support for those, like the did for sql server.
That means, if you don't have access installed, you are probably stuck using text queries executed against the database. Think of access like a SQL Lite database: unless you install a real management UI, you pretty much are left with straight DDL.
Andrew Backer
2010-02-24 23:17:53
I don't really think this answers the question asked (which asks how to do it within VS), but it might be a valid solution to the problem.
David-W-Fenton
2010-02-25 04:32:07
True. I doubt ms added support for access to vs.net. The did happen to integrate sql server quite thoroughly, but that is extra above and beyond what is required to view. I think you can get an OLE source to just about anything, MySQL, etc, but I ms added didn't add custom DDL logic for all of those. I wasn't too clear on that in the post tho.
Andrew Backer
2010-02-25 18:38:46
FWIW, Jet/ACE lacks support for a lot of garden-variety DDL commands, so it might have been hard to implement if they'd tried. Since the end of VB, MS doesn't consider Jet/ACE a valid data store for its flagship development tools any longer (hence all those articles in the Knowledge Base deprecating Jet), so it wouldn't be surprised that VS has no direct support.
David-W-Fenton
2010-02-25 19:08:22
True. I just wish they had fixed accessed and done something with it/access in general rather than get so close and then just *splat*, stop improving. I never want to try to fix a corrupt MDB again :)
Andrew Backer
2010-02-26 00:25:01