Jet with unixODBC and MDB Tools on macOS/Linux: ODBC connection string "must be of type JetConnection"

Using macOS with Access 2002 + ODBC.

<PackageReference Include="System.Data.Odbc" Version="5.0.0" />
<PackageReference Include="EntityFrameworkCore.Jet" Version="3.1.0-alpha.3" />
<PackageReference Include="EntityFrameworkCore.Jet.Odbc" Version="3.1.0-alpha.3" />
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore" Version="3.1.10" />

ODBC + Drives are installed/working via:

+ brew install unixODBC
+ brew install mdbtools --with-unixODBC

I’m using isql -k "connection-string-goes-here" to make sure Access JET4 database can read from tables or queries.

What am I running into Inside the OnConfiguring(optionsBuilder) method of my DbContext .UseJetOdbc(connection_string) always produces errors.

optionsBuilder.UseJetOdbc(@"Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=/Users/p_m_/Desktop/access-db/open-data/Electronics-Sales.mdb;")

The error this produces

Could not find DSN nor DBQ in connect string

+ When using `isql` DBQ must be capitalized in order to recognize it as the DBQ
+ Using the string exactly above - breaks in dotnet / but works using isql
+ The Driver is just named as-is-above in the unixODBC configuration files which is why it matches Windows XP

The connection parameter must be of type JetConnection.
To get around this, we tried creating a demo project using only System.Data.Odbc

<PackageReference Include="System.Data.Odbc" Version="5.0.0" />

In that demo, we use OdbcConnectionStringBuilder with OdbcConnection to access our Access Office XP database. This works, even on macOS with .dylib patched in ODBC Drivers.

What can I do to get UseJet()/UseJetOdbc() to use my OdbcConnection?
Here the missing link to Accdb + EF Core + Unix + OData + ASP .NET Core looks to be a connection sanitization bias.

1. Does UseJetOdbc() lowercase attributes like DBQ which are case-sensitive on Unix?
2. EF Core Jet asks for a connection string, filename, or OdbcConnection.
3. Is there a special version of OdbcConnection that doesn’t derive from System.Data.Odbc?

I have EntityFrameworkCore.Jet.Odbc in my project - this case is not urgent, please take your time.

[lauxjpn]

@P-Medicado Thanks for listing your research. Especially option 1 looks very promising in the long run and would just need a bit of dedication of someone to port the UCanAccess / Jackcess code to .NET.

Of course migrating projects to a different database is definitely an option as well, as you do with your translation repo.

[MultiCoinCharts]

I’m sorry, the developer working on it used the JDBC UCanAccess bridge, this includes too much runtime translation for production use. We decided to stick with Access as a UI for designing databases for other database platforms.

Using Access as a web server database is a powerful experience for developers who don’t have a database engineering background. The development experience on Windows using EFC Jet is entirely doable (even Microsoft acknowledged apparently). However we have created a repo for translating mdb/accdb files into MySQL databases which are crossplatform by default.

Here are potential alternatives for Access as a web server database outside of Windows:

1. Using UCanAccess, a JDBC cross-platform driver for Access
2. Containerizing the Access Engine Redistributable from Microsoft
3. Using the ESE/Jet engine open sourced 3 days ago

Access db to MySQL translator / Example Access + EFCore Jet App repo