MS-Access to Tally

•    Introduction
•    Getting Started 
  
•    MS-Access Database Information 
•    Writing SQL-queries (to retrieve data from MS-Access database)
•    Writing XML tags (required by UDIMagic to identify/send data to Tally)
•    Sample MS-Access Database
•    Downloads
•    Links

MS-Access is a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) which is used as a backend with generally Visual Basic packages. Untill now, integrating an ERP package with Tally was a tedious task as it required modifications in the existing ERP package. Moreover, this could be done only by programmers.

UDIMagic professionl edition allows to fetch data from your MS-Access database and send it directly to Tally. And all this
happens by merely writing few SQL-SELECT statements and XML-tags.

- Works with all versions of  MS-Access
- Supports Tally 6.3 and higher versions
- MS Access-to-Tally feature is available in the UDI-Magic professional-edition only (UDIMagic v3.0 onwards)

The first thing you need to do is to specify the Database Name and password.

Follow the steps given underneath:-
a) Start UDIMagic.
b) Next, select "Advanced Usage" option (available in professional version).
c) Next, select the Database-type as "MS-Access"
c) Next,  click on the button "Settings" and specify the MS-Access database name and password (if any).


Remarks:-
a) The UDIMagic Demo version comes with default values for MS-Access database. These values ( database-name; password etc) refer to the database named "AccessDatabase.mdb". The password is 'sc3306'
b) The AccessDatabase.mdb has provided for Demo purpose only.
c) Users can specify their MS-Access database details
d) The TEST-Connection button is not available in MS-Access.

For Windows 95 and Windows NT users

Those using Windows 95 and Windows NT need to install MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components) for using the Access-to-Tally feature. In addition, the Windows 95 users need to install DCOM95 prior to installing MDAC.

To retrieve data from your MS-Access database, you need to write SQL statements (queries).

This process involves :-
a) Plan-out which DATA is to be transferred from MS-Access to Tally
b) Identify the tables (Masters and Vouchers) that contain the required data
c) Write SQL-queries to fetch data

SQL-QUERIES
SQL-queries are generally written in a Text file (having .qry extension). You can use any TEXT-editor (like Notepad) to view/edit the SQL-query files.

UDIMagic allows you to write multiple SQL-SELECT statements in a Query (qry) file.

Sample file :-

MS-Access Query1.qry

<SQL.LIST>
<SQL>.........your SQL-SELECT statement1..........</SQL>
<SQL>.........your SQL-SELECT statement2..........</SQL>
........
</SQL.LIST>

As you can see, each SQL-SELECT statement is to be enclosed in <SQL>....</SQL> tag. This allows you to have multiple queries in a single Query (txt) file.

UDIMagic processes these queries one-by-one in the order in which they appear in the query-file. It contructs a result data-set which can be visualized as Columnar format comprising of Rows and Columns. The first field in the result data-set can be accessed using COLUMNREFERNCE A, the second field in the result data-set can be accessed using COLUMNREFERENCE B and so on. This has been discussed in the next section.

In the previous section, we had seen how to fetch data from the MS-Access database. In this section, we shall focus on how to write XML tags to identify the data and send it to Tally. 

What are these XML tags and why are they required ?

To import data into Tally, you need  to tell UDIMagic what data you have and where is it stored.  This is done using XML tags.
Let's take an example to understand it.

EXAMPLE:-

Step 1: Write a SQL-query to fetch data from the table named "Ledger"   (of  database AccessDatabase.mdb) as given below:-

SQL-query
(Refer file "Access Query2.qry" provided with UDIMagic Demo)

<SQL.LIST>
<SQL> SELECT l.name AS name,g.name AS parent FROM ledger l,groupmaster g WHERE l.groupid=g.id </SQL>
</SQL.LIST>

The result of the above SQL-query can be visualised as follows:-

Result data-set

Step 2: Write XML tags to identify and send the data to Tally

XML tags
(Refer file "Access XMLTags2.xml" provided with UDIMagic Demo)

<XML.LIST>
  <XML>
    <MASTER TYPE="LEDGER">
      <NAME.LIST>
        <NAME COLUMNREFERENCE="A"/>
      </NAME.LIST>
      <PARENT COLUMNREFERENCE ="B"/>
    </MASTER>
  </XML>
</XML.LIST>


SUMMARY

- Fetch data from MS-Access database using SQL-SELECT statements
- Write XML tags required by UDI-Magic to process the data and send it to Tally.

The sample MS-Access Database named 'AccessDatabase.mdb' contains the following tables:-