Does anybody successfully import Betfair data into Access?

OK, cancel the above, I have just managed to successfully decode the Help instructions, and create a table.

All I need now is to get a copy of "Access 2000 for Dummies " ...

1) Unzip the file you have downloaded. You get a csv file.

2) Never used Access 2003, but in Access 2010: Go to the tab called "External data" and click "Text File". Browse to the file you have unzipped and follow the wizard.

You should also find plenty of info in the help files or on the internet if you search for "import csv files into Access 2003" or something such.

Thanks for the reply Mr Anderson, I see by looking at the times, we must have cross posted.

Yes, it was the unzipping bit which was causing problems, I cracked that, and now I have to learn how to use Access to get rid of a huge amount of information which is absolutely no use to me. All I need is the BSP for each horse and the lowest price traded in running.

I was able to do this in Excel (in which I have a little experise, not much, but sufficient to get by) by scraping the Timeform results database on Betfair, but as you can imagine, to do this race by race for a whole season's racing would be a nightmare.

I did a bit of this kind of stuff a few years back but found that Access wasn't up to handling some of the filesizes. Things might have changed since then but I ended up having to install SQL...from that point on things were a breeze.

OHMIGOD ...I thought that learning Access would be the summit ...how do I go about installing and learning to use SQL (whatever that may be ) ?...

There is an annoying 2 Gb limit for Access databases. To work around it you can create a database with links to tables in other databases though, and then run union queries on up to 50 of those linked tables. That's what I do. (I have written a little visual basic application that helps me write those union queries quickly.) A union query can't also be a "table-query", but afterwards you can run a table-query on the union query to make a table.

The only other database program I've used is Open Office Base, and it's not good imo. Can't comment on SQL, but not having that 2 Gb limit would be sweet for sure.

SQL (whatever that may be ) ?

SQL is the language for writing database queries. There is a database management system called mySQL, which might be what CaptainScarlet is talking about.

Mr Anderson, I truly appreciate your replies, thank you.

I will confess that I have no idea what a union query or a table query might be, but I am right at the bottom of the learning curve ....

Np:) You will want to learn about queries. It's how you retrieve the information you want from your database.

Art Decko don't get too freaked out...if you download any of Betfair's data it'll come down as a huge csv file or some other file that is easily stored as one massive database. Most of that info may well be of no use to you (which was the case with me). SQL stands for Structured Query Language and is just a way of extracting data from databases.

Though it can get quite convoluted when you start linking databases and whatnot it's fairly straightforward if you're only working with one database table (essentially one massive spreadsheet). The most basic way of accessing the subsets of data you might need from a given database is the SELECT statement.

A SELECT statement, in it's bare form, goes like the following...

SELECT
FROM   
WHERE 

There's TONS of info available for both beginners and advanced users alike. Here's a quick random site that gives some nice basic info if you're new to using SQL...

http://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_syntax.asp

Enjoy.

Thank you Captain Scarlet and Mr Anderson, I will get the hang of it eventually, I kmow I will.

I did become quite adept in BASIC programming back in the early eighties, on my trusty Amstrad CPC 6128, so hopefully there are enough brain cells left in functional order to cope with SQL ...

If you are going to use a number of the Betfair data files, ie, last 3 months worth of data then the way that I would manege that in access 2003 would be to import the 1st file into a named table (T_RawData) then create a "Make Table" query based on that table. You can use the "Make Table" query to then cleanse out all of the rubbish and stuff you do not want and finally make a new cleaner table (T_CleanData) for analysis.

For every subsequent Betfair data file you would delete the contents of "T_RawData" and import the next Betfair data file to it, then run an "Append" query which contains the same filters and conditions as the "Make Table" query to append the newly imported data into "T_CleanData"

Repeat the process for all files required, you can setup a small macro if you wish to take away some of the manual repetitive steps.

It sounds a bit long winded but it does work and you end up with one table containing all of your cleansed data. Once you get out of access into MySQL or SQL Server the file size limitations of access dissapear but the skills required can increase especially with SQL Server.

Forget Access, it can't handle the amount of data... Get MySQL or MS SQL Server Express (both free)