PDFs in MS Access

[bermetj]

Hello,
A friend of mine has many binders of typewritten and even handwritten
recipes that she would like to put into a computer-searchable form.
There is no need to be able to search within the documents themselves;
having an image (which could be printed out as needed) in the computer
and having the images tagged with the recipe title and various keywords
would be sufficient.She already has MS Access and a scanner that will
make pdf files. She would have about 8000 to 10,000 pdf files that she
would be working with.

Any advice on whether to MS Access or another program is better suited
for this?

 

[Guest]

Access doesn't deal with files well. Especially that many.

 

[aaron.kempf]

Access deals with files just fine.
it just takes a couple of lines of code.

if you were using Access Data Projects; you could juse use XP_CMDSHELL
in order to list files and it would be SUPER EASY to deal with.

but MDB would require a little bit of programming; probably less then
20 lines if you did it right

-Aaron

 

[bermetj]

Aaron,
I am not sure I am familiar with Access Data Projects. Where is it and
where I can find it? I thought one would use OLE with files... I am
probably a dinosaur...

 

[dbahooker]

under File, New in Access you select 'Project using New Data'

then you might need to browse to a MSDE or SQL Server instance..

if you go here and look for 'MSDE' it's usually found when you download
SP4 for SQL 2000.
www.microsoft.com/sql


I just think that ADP is a GREAT way to learn about SQL Server; and I
think that the market for SQL Server professionals is a GREAT place to
be.

I just love working with real tools instead of beta applications like
MDB; MDB just isn't reliable enough and stable enough for a single
record and a single user in my opinion.

And SQL Server? Any jr developer can learn SQL in a couple of months;
maybe take a class or two-- and you should be able to make $50-$60
grand in nearly any city.

I just dont think that's true with Access MDB files.
If you've been using Access MDB you're at best-- worthless.

-Aaron

 

[Zac Woodall [MSFT]]

It all depends on the size of the files in question. You can of course
embed a few of these files into OLE fields in an Access table and see what
the result is. You might try just creating a simple table with a couple
fields, like RecipieName and RecipieFile. Then just put 100 or so in to see
how the system behaves. The hard limit to Jet's file size is 2GB, so if it
looks like you'll be approaching that limit, you should consider a different
store. There are free ODBC compliant datbase engines avilable on the
Internet which will store much more data than 2GB. You can always download
one of these, and use Access as the front end.

 

[bermetj]

Aaron,
Thank you for your suggestion. However I would ask you to leave
evaluations of my worthiness out of your posts. If you have anything to
say to me personally, you can email me at the email provided.

 

[Larry Linson]

... many binders of typewritten ... handwritten
recipes that she would like to put into a
computer-searchable form. There is no need to
be able to search within the documents themselves;
having an image (which could be printed out as
needed) in the computer and having the images
tagged with the recipe title and various keywords
would be sufficient.She already has MS Access
and a scanner that will make pdf files. She would
have about 8000 to 10,000 pdf files that she
would be working with.

Any advice on whether to MS Access or another
program is better suited for this?

You can keep the PDF files stored externally to the DB, and keep information
about them in the DB for searching. You can open some types of files by
hyperlinking to them, and PDF may be one that you could handle that way.
Another way is to use the SHELL function to open the application (Acrobat
reader, or other) that processes those files, with the file name.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP