Question

How do you edit and update ESRI personal geodatabases using SQL


Hey guys I'm converting an Esri Personal Geodatabase (.mdb) file into an Esri Geodatabase (.gdb)file. I need to include a new column in the new .gdb populated with data from another table. The column will be populated according to keywords within one of the columns in the original table and one way I have figured to do this is to run SQL Executor however, it doesn't look like SQL supports .mdb files. Is there any other way to do this or how can I work around SQL? I know this is a bit of a confusing or vague question but I'm very new to the world of FME and SQL


2 replies

Userlevel 4

You will have to select the Microsoft Access format in the SQLExecutor for your mdb file.

Access does indeed support SQL, but the syntax can be a little bit unusual if you're used to ANSI SQL.

This statement in an SQLExecutor will add a column "MyColumn" to an existing table "Table1":

alter table [Table1] 
add column MyColumn text(10)

Tested with FME 2016.1

Also look at the documentation: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb177883%28v=office.12%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError;=-2147217396

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Hi Haumanian,

If I understand you right, you do not need SQL.

Include two readers in your workbench: one for de mdb and one for the other table. Next use a Featuremerger to combine these. And then you can write the result to a file geodatabase (.gdb).

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