1 Reply Latest reply on Dec 27, 2012 9:26 AM by Robert Morton

    Generic ODBC connection to Access Database

    Rajendra Kodavati
    Rajendra Kodavati Dec 27, 2012 12:24 AM

      Hi Experts,

       

      I have an Access(*.mdb) database file. i have created a user DSN for that file.when i am trying to connect to that file using ODBC connector in Tableau,it's throwing the error as attached.But when i am using Microsoft Access connector it's working fine, i could be able to connect to tables and read the data.

       

      Could you suggest the process of using ODBC connector for connecting to .mdb files.

       

      Thanks & Regards,

      Rajendra Kodavati.

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        • 1. Re: Generic ODBC connection to Access Database
          Robert Morton
          Robert Morton Employee Dec 27, 2012 9:26 AM (in response to Rajendra Kodavati)

          Hi Rajendra,

           

          I was able to reproduce this problem within my environment as well, and I determined that the Access ODBC driver does not properly support the ODBC API for enumerating primary / foreign key constraints. You can suppress Tableau's attempt to use that API with the attached .tdc file (Tableau DataConnection Customization). Please copy that file to the 'Datasources' folder under 'My Tableau Repository' in your user documents folder, and then re-launch Tableau to pick up the changes. You can learn more about TDC files for Generic ODBC connections in this Knowledge Base article: http://kb.tableausoftware.com/articles/knowledgebase/customizing-odbc-connections

           

          Without support for foreign key detection, Tableau will not be able to perform certain query optimizations for multi-table joins. Furthermore, the Generic ODBC connector can only operate using the SQL and ODBC standards, so it will not be as well tuned for the idiosyncrasies of Access SQL syntax as our first-class connector to Access is. I highly recommend using our first-class Access connector instead of ODBC, though I understand that there may be specific reasons why this is not possible in your case.

           

          I hope this helps,

          Robert