Access Access Databases without Access to Access

Tools for making Access databases (both .mdb and .accdb) databases available to users without the use of Access. Three conversion tools are available in generalized formats. [1] Conversion from an .accdb or .mdb database that may be remote or local to a local set of .csv files named by the tables in the database. This tool wraps around the mdbtools package (which leverages the drivers in unixodbc) to provide one-line conversion of an Access database to a folder of .csv files. This is accomplished by the accessor.bash script, which combines two other scripts: retrieve_remote_db.bash (if necessary) and msdb_to_csvs.bash. [2] Reading the folder of .csvs into R as a list of data.frames that is directly analagous to the .accdb or .mdb database of tables via the read_database() function. This is accomplished through an included R script of a few minimal functions generalizing the base capacity of R to read data files. [3] A Dockerfile that documents a Docker image (stored on Docker Hub), which provides a stable, minimal runtime environment that automatically downloads up-to-date data from a particular .accdb database (California Delta fish salvage monitoring database) by default. The Dockerfile includes options that allow for simple high-level toggling of runtime options including the location of the file to be retrieved and whether or not an interactive R session should be initiated. Methods text included describes the bash, R, and Dockerfile script options and default values.