Question

Is it possible to have a MS access backend database (Microsoft JET or Access Database Engine) set up so that whenever entries are inserted/updated those changes are replicated^* to a PostgreSQL database?

Two-way synchronization would be nice, but one way would be acceptable.

I know it’s popular to link the two and use one as a frontend, but it’s essential that both be backend.

Any suggestions?

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^* ie reflected, synchronized, mirrored

Answer 1

Can you use Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition? Or do you have to use Microsoft Access Database Engine? It’s possible you’ll have more options using MS SQL express, like more complete triggers and logging.

Either way, you’re going to need a way to accumulate a log of changed rows from the source database engine, and a program to sync them to PostgreSQL by reading the log and converting it into suitable PostgreSQL INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE statements.

You could do this by having audit triggers in MADB/Express insert a row into an audit shadow table for every “real” table whenever it changed, including inserting special “row deleted” audit entries. Then your sync program could connect to both MADB/Express, read the audit tables, apply the changes to PostgreSQL, and empty the audit tables.

I’ll be surprised if you find anything to do this out of the box. It’s one area where Microsoft SQL Server has a big advantage because of all the deep Access and MADB engine integation to support the synchronisation and integration features.

There are some ETL (“Extract, Transform, Load”) tools that might be helpful, like Pentaho and Talend. I don’t know if you can achieve the desired degree of automation with them though.