VB/COM-compliant tools to synchronize a MS Access database with a MySQL database

[Alex Zendel]

Hello all,

I'm working on a VBA-ADO programming project to merge three database tables into one. All of the incoming datasets will likely be manually imported into Access before any code is executed. I'm going to have to pre-process each of the three datasets, including GIS processing where the only options for writing is writing into an Access database. But I'm seriously considering backing up or replicating our data into a MySQL database - I don't like relying on Access alone since its backup system doesn't allow a point-in-time recovery (am I correct here? no transaction log = no detailed data recovery - barring back up copies of the .mdb file?). So near the end of my program, I want to initiate a synchronization/replication with/to the MySQL database.

More considerations: Existing records in both databases may be updated by other users at different times - the synchronization must account for this. Also, database users may delete one or more records from either database - the synchronization must also account for this. Finally, other users might insert records into either database.

In a nutshell, is there any freely-accessible, COM-compliant code/objectclasses/methods/api out there for synchronizing tables in two different databases (including different rdbms - probably working through ODBC connections).

We need more than just an import/export utility. If we were to simply export/dump our Access database to MySQL after the code is run, then the MySQL transaction log will just show a long list of inserts. That defeats purpose - I want to use MySQL so we have a transaction log (the MySQL binary log) from which we could restore our data in the event of a mishap. We need a synchronization tool!

Thanks

AZ