The MDB Tools project is a effort to document the MDB file format used in Microsoft's Access database package, and to provide a set of tools and applications to make that data available on other platforms.

Specifically, MDB Tools includes programs to export schema and data to other databases such as MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, PostgreSQL, and others.

Also, included is a SQL engine for performing simple SQL queries. The 0.5 release includes an updated GUI interface (screenshot is available here). A sparse but functional ODBC driver is included as well.

MDB Tools currently has read-only support for Access 97 (Jet 3) and Access 2000/2002 (Jet 4) formats. Access 2000 support is a recent addition and may not be as complete as Jet 3 support.

Write support is currently being worked on and the first cut is expected to be included in the 0.6 release.

For more information check our FAQ and our Installation Guide.

Source code for MDB Tools is available from CVS at sourceforge. To anon cvs it, do like this:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.mdbtools.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/mdbtools login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.mdbtools.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/mdbtools co mdbtools

There is a mailing list for those having trouble or who are interested in helping or tracking MDB Tools progress. To subscribe go to http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/mdbtools-dev

Here are some resources that may be useful with mdb tools (Note: Microsoft reorganized and removed some of these, so they are left as an aid to tracking down the new locations, if any).

MSDN

when this page opens, on the left side, click on books, then microsoft jet database engine programmers guide. There are 13 chapers & 5 appendices.

Here's a couple of links that talk about the size of some of the objects:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/books/dnjet/apa_body.htm
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/books/dnjet/c1_body_17.htm
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/books/dnjet/c1_body_18.htm