Import XML Data Into Microsoft Access

Back in November 2003, I was
assigned the task of creating an import routine that would refresh data in an
Access 2000 database from an array of XML files.  For some reason, I
thought it would be easy, as in "one touch import" or
something.  As it turns out, it is not that easy.

I searched the Internet for suggestions, but found little.  I am not
sure what I was hoping for, but I thought there must be some kind of example
out there, or maybe even a third party utility to simplify the process. 
I even asked our local Access MVP for a quick fix, but he assured me that I
would have to write a custom import routine from scratch.

Well, I did slog through the code, all the while vowing to turn it
into an article someday.  What follows is the product of that vow. 
If you have been searching the Internet for an Import XML into Access
solution, then congratulations.  If not, and you just stumbled upon this
article by accident, then bookmark this page.  The way XML is being used
these days, it is just a matter of time before you’ll be needing it.

The Problem Defined

The project that inspired this article is
the quintessential example of where XML is useful.  My client
had outsourced their help desk management to a company using non-Microsoft
technologies, hosted off-site, behind a firewall.  They
wanted metrics reports, but the help desk web interface had no such
provision.  As a compromise, an arrangement was made to have daily
data dumps sent to my client so that they could create their own reports,
using Microsoft Access.

Each night, help desk data files were zipped up and FTP’d to our
site. One XML file would be provided for each PROBLEM
ticket modified the previous day.  The Microsoft Access import utility I
created would run on schedule, looking for any new zip files, unpacking them
and processing each XML file in turn.  The associated download for this article contains only the
code for importing the XML. If you are looking for code to unpack a zip file
using VBA and a third party DLL, drop
me a line
and I will send it to you.

WARNING:  Each XML import will
be unique.  The download for this article is an example, not
an import utility.  At best, all you will be able to leverage from the
downloaded code is some simple file looping routines and the general
process idea.

One of the caveats of working with XML is that there needs to be
agreement, a contract of sorts, between the parties exchanging data. The
structure or schema of the data should not change, or else the import
process will break. For the example considered in this article, the
following schema was agreed upon:

XML file schema example 

You will notice in the schema image above that each child of the PROBLEM
node contains child node(s) named DATA.  While this XML is well formed,
the convention of naming all lower level child nodes DATA is a bad
practice.  I loaded one of these XML files into Visual Studio .Net
to see if I could create a schema against which incoming XML could be
validated, but I received the following error message.
 
XML Schema error message 

I am sure that by labeling this a "bad practice"
I am going to hear from non-Microsoft programmers, explaining why this is
wholly justified.  Quite frankly, I will not be able to defend
myself.  I do not know that much about XML.  What I do know is
that I had wanted to use the DOM to validate incoming XML files against
a predefined schema, but the construction of this XML made that difficult, if
not impossible.  I guess my point is that what you see in this
example is probably the worst-case scenario of what you should expect when
importing XML data in to Access.

Additionally, it may not be obvious from the above illustration but each
PROBLEM has one and only one parent record whose attributes are stored
in the PROBLEM_DETAIL node. For each PROBLEM_DETAIL record, there are
one or more child records in each of the following nodes: 
CALL_NOTES, PROBLEM_NOTES, OUTAGES, RCA, PROBLEM_AUDIT_TRAIL
and PROBLEM_HISTORY.

I started by creating the Microsoft Access tables and their relationships,
with cascading deletes to all the foreign key tables.  The mapping
between Node names and Table names was necessary to conform to my
client’s naming standards.  You could, of course, match table
names to node names, as well as field names to child node
names.  The code for this example aliases everything, which is a pain,
but makes the solution more flexible.  Below is a summary of the XML
node names, their corresponding Access table and the Access relationship
diagram of the finished table schema. 

XML Node Name

Access Table Name

 PROBLEM_DETAIL

 PRBLMS

 CALL_NOTES

 PRBLM_CALL_NTS

 PROBLEM_NOTES

 PRBLM_NTS

 OUTAGES

 PRBLM_OTGS

 RCA

 PRBLM_RCAS

 PROBLEM_AUDIT_TRAIL

 PRBLM_ADT_TRL

 PROBLEM_HISTORY

 PRBLM_HSTY

Table relationship diagram of Access database

 
One last project requirement that influenced my code below is
that incoming help desk records may or may not have a corresponding record
already stored in my Access database.  For example, say a ticket was
opened on Tuesday, handled on Wednesday and closed on Thursday.  For
the sake of my project, this would mean that I would get an XML file for this
issue on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, each describing its status
on the previous day.  My approach to this requirement was first to perform
a delete to remove any existing record before inserting the latest
values.  I found this easier than trying to identify which columns had
changed and updating an existing record.  For my needs, this worked
fine, but you will have to consider how you want to approach this
question. 

Danny Lesandrini
Danny Lesandrini
Danny J. Lesandrini currently works as the IT Director for Pharmatech Oncology Inc. at http://www.pharmatechoncology.com/. He holds Microsoft Certifications in Access, Visual Basic and SQL Server and has been programming with Microsoft development tools since 1995.

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Cloud Insider for top news, trends & analysis

Latest Articles