mdbtools

mdbtools is a collection of tools designed to work with JET / MS Access database (MDB) files. The main package offers various command-line utilities for listing tables, exporting schema and data, running SQL queries, and inspecting file properties. Supporting libraries like libmdb3t64 and libmdbsql3t64 enable programmatic access and SQL engine functionality, allowing integration with languages like PHP or ODBC drivers.

Use cases include forensic analysis of Access databases, data migration to other formats like CSV or JSON, schema reverse engineering, and querying legacy MDB files without Microsoft Access. Tools like mdb-export, mdb-sql, and mdb-tables facilitate extraction and examination in security investigations or data recovery scenarios.

Additional packages provide development files, ODBC support, and deprecated utilities for specialized C code generation, though some tools like mdb-array and mdb-header are marked for future removal.

mdbtools parses the JET database format used by Microsoft Access, reading binary structures like tables, schemas, queries, and pages. Core library libmdb3t64 handles file access and data types, while libmdbsql3t64 provides a SQL engine for query processing. Utilities leverage these libraries to dump headers, export rows with customizable delimiters/quoting, execute SQL via mdb-sql, or hex-dump binary content. Environment variables like MDB_JET3_CHARSET and MDBOPTS control charset conversion and debugging.