Linking MS Access and database server without installing any additional drivers - php

Question

on our company-website, we have an html-form, where an e-mail is generated via php for consulting reasons - which works fine. My superiors want me to save the information of the html-form into an MS Access-database.
I couldn't come up with a solution that directly writes from php into MS Access - so I convinced them to go with MySQL via phpMyAdmin - linking the tables via ODBC in Access.
The connection between php and MySQL was easy, and the connection between MS Access and MySQL would've also been:
To do that, an ODBC-MySQL-Provider is required for each Client to open the Database, which the IT-department doesn't want to install.
We also use an MS SQL Server on an Windows Server - I could also connect php to SQL Server - but in this case we need to install the ODBC SQL Server Provider when linking the tables or the SQL Server Native Clients if we go with Ado. - IT guys:
no installation of providers on all clients.
My question is:
Is there any possible solution for accessing MySQL/SQL Server
from MS Access without the installation of ODBC-Providers at all?
I have really high pressure on this and can't find anything that could satisfy user-needs and expectations.
Thanks in advance
Baris
Edit: the working php/MySQL-Code - based on mysqli
$servername = "----------.de";
$username = "-------";
$password = "--------";
$dbName = "---------";
$port = "-------";
$con= mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbName, $port );
if (mysqli_connect_errno())
{
echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: " . mysqli_connect_error();
}
The following connection-string works for connecting to a server-side ms sqlserver from MS Access with the integrated SQLSRV32.dll-provider. Thanks to GordThompson
cs = "Driver={SQL Server};"
cs = cs & "Server=ip-adress,port-number;"
cs = cs & "Database=database-name;"
con.Open cs, "username", "password"
Since there is a possiblity to connect to the SQL Server without additional provider, I am going for the PDO/SQLServer-combination, and loading the data based on the connection-string above.

Answer 1

Since the overriding concern is to avoid installing additional drivers on the client machines and you have a Microsoft SQL Server available to you then you can
Have your PHP script write the required information to the SQL Server, and then
Create an Access process that retrieves the information from the SQL Server using the "SQL Server" ODBC driver that is installed with every copy of Windows.

Answer 2

First and foremost, PHP can absolutely connect to an MS Access database (specifically the Jet/ACE SQL Engine). In modern day computing, practically all general purpose languages (C#, Java, PHP, Perl, Python, R, VB) can connect to all popular relational database management systems (RDMS) -both file level (SQLite, MS Access) and server level (SQL Server, MySQL, Postgre, Oracle, DB2), each using some type of customized or generalized library.
With PHP's PDO, you can practically interchange the connected backend database. So however you connect to MySQL, you can model such a connection with other databases. The web popularity of PHP/MySQL make it seem they are married to each other but they are not! Below are examples using DSN, Driver, and even PHP's own API, sqlsrv.
MS ACCESS
# USING DSN
$database="C:\Path\To\Database\File.accdb";
try {
$dbh = new PDO("odbc:DSN=MS Access Database;DBq=$database;");
$dbh->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
$sql = "SELECT * FROM tablename";
$STH = $dbh->query($sql);
$STH->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
}
catch(PDOException $e) {
echo $e->getMessage()."\n";
exit;
}
# close the connection
$dbh = null;
# USING DRIVER (NON-DSN)
$database="C:\Path\To\Database\File.accdb";
try {
$dbh = new PDO("odbc:Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};DBq=$database;");
$dbh->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
$sql = "SELECT * FROM tablename";
$STH = $dbh->query($sql);
$STH->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
}
catch(PDOException $e) {
echo $e->getMessage()."\n";
exit;
}
# close the connection
$dbh = null;
SQL SERVER
# WITH ODBC DRIVER PDO
try {
$dbh = new PDO("odbc:Driver={SQL Server};Server=$server;database=$database",$username,$password);
$dbh->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
$sql = "SELECT * FROM dbo.tablename";
$STH = $dbh->query($sql);
$STH->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
}
catch(PDOException $e) {
echo $e->getMessage()."\n";
exit;
}
# close the connection
$dbh = null;
# WITH SQLSRV PDO
try {
$dbh = new PDO("sqlsrv:server=$server;database=$database",$username,$password);
$dbh->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
$sql = "SELECT * FROM dbo.tablename";
$STH = $dbh->query($sql);
$STH->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
}
catch(PDOException $e) {
echo $e->getMessage()."\n";
exit;
}
# close the connection
$dbh = null;
Extra resource for other language connections:
https://github.com/ParfaitG/DATABASE_CONNECTIONS