John,
you've received quite a few responses to your request for an Access database appication
for Linux.
Unfortunately, there are none that will do what you want, natively opening an Access.mdb
file. Indeed,
there are no Linux applications that can sensibly read Access databases.
As you have seen from the responses, there are numerous database frontends and backends
for Linux
but, none of them can read/write in the Access Jet database file format. Also, none of
them are as
feature rich or visually polished as MS Access is.
Don't misunderstand, there are countless high quality relational and transactional
database systems for
Linux but, none that support the MS Access file format. Right now, the closest solution to
MS Access
support is in the form of converting from MS Access. This involves using Access itself to
export the
database to a SQL RDBMS system via ODBC and then using the SQL database. This is likely
far more
trouble than it is worth to convert your monthly Access.mdb.
It would seem that your only solution in the near future will be to run Access itself on
your Linux
system utilizing WINE. In fact, this is a rather nice way to design and manage some of the
Open
Source databases out there, as Access does support SQL via ODBC.
Sadly, there does not appear to be any serious interest in deconstructing the Jet file
format to make
an Access clone by the open source community. Open Office and Star Office feel that there
aren't
enough people using the MS Access component of MS Office to warrant the effort of cloning
it. They
prefer to support the open standards using ODBC and JDBC with SQL databases which is why
Star
Office includes Adabas. This means that any support of the MS Access (Jet) file format is
unlikely in
the near term.
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