Help in formulating request for MySQL access at work

[Jamie Agnew]

Hi,

In my current job I am responsible for a lot of reporting and also for making recommendations for improvements, to systems and processes. My current methods with building and updating reports are a result of the systems that were here when I started; basically Access, Excel and some online data sources. My general method is to extract data from the online tools via Excel exports and manually import these into Access to update tables. I then use lots of ODBC connections from Access to Excel to allow reports to be updated via refreshes.

I want to move away from the manual exports and imports of data to having SQL access to the database tables of the online tools. I need to make a case for this but I have a problem in that I am not exactly sure how this will work. I know the IT team in my office use MySQL but that's about it.... I am confident I would be able to learn whatever is necessary once I have access to the system but am not even sure what to request - i.e. how do I link MySQL (if that's what's needed) to my reporting methods? Would the result just be that I link my existing Access databases directly to the source tables uses SQL or would I need to make new systems using MySQL?

I am not sure this is the right place to ask this but any suggestions, or directions to a more relevant forum, would be much appreciated