Connecting to a MS Access database - php

Question

Someone asked me to do some research to achieve the following result, maybe you guys can help me out an suggest me some tips.
We have a local server and there are different 'jobs' on it ( in a MS Access ) Database.
Now we want to create a platform where other users can check their "job status" with different parameters ( field names etc ) from the MS Access database.
I am looking for the best practice, how to connect to this database from everywhere in the world. I already did some research and found the following links:
http://phpmaster.com/using-an-access-database-with-php/
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.odbc-connect.php
How can I connect between a web-application and that MS Access database
Can I update it realtime
What kind of protocol does the servers has to support to intereact with a website?
Currently the server can be reached from outside via a VPN connection.
A piece of code I've already tried :
try{
$dbh = new PDO("odbc:Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};Dbq=Custos_TAB.accdb;Uid=Admin");
}catch(PDOException $e){
echo $e->getMessage();
}
I received the following error : "could not find driver".

Answer 1

Try this, assuming you have the PDO odbc driver installed and enabled on the web server.
$user='Admin';
$password='';
$mdbFilename="Custos_TAB.accdb";
$connection = odbc_connect("Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};Dbq=$mdbFilename", $user, $password);
$sql="SELECT * FROM [tblHere]";
$rs=odbc_exec($connection,$sql);
//do stuff here
odbc_close($connection);
or
$user='Admin';
$password='';
/*if you have a path here such as c:\db\Custos_TAB.accdb, make sure to use double
backslashes, (i.e "c:\\db\\Custos_TAB.accdb")*/
$mdbFilename="Custos_TAB.accdb";
$conn = new PDO("odbc:Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};Dbq=$mdbFilename;Uid=$user='Admin';Pwd=$password;");
$conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);

Answer 2

Stop running services first (if there's any)
Open the php.ini file and uncomment the extension for php_pdo_odbc
Start services again (if needed)
Make sure you correctly locate your database in Dbq=Custos_TAB.accdb
//Just an example in my case
Dbq=C:\Users\Server\Documents\Db1.accdb