Every day we hear the word "export". This concept is used in life and in work. We hear this word in television programs and read in the news. At the same time, we present goods that the state exports and sells abroad. In the article, we will understand that this is data export, for what and in what cases it is used.
Data Export Concept
The term "export" comes from the English word export, meaning "remove, export." Data export is information that is downloaded from the system for external use. At the same time, both system objects and the values and parameters contained in it are selected. When data is uploaded, it is converted to a format for use in an external system. The export process takes place automatically or semi-automatically.
Export from Databases
Export to the database is applied in such cases:
- Backing up information. This mechanism is used in companies, banks and organizations where the storage of information from the database is critical.
- Creating a data archive. In large companies, where gigabytes of data are processed daily in the database, the size of the database is growing too much. This makes it difficult to work with it, slows down performance and requires large memory resources for storage. Periodically, according to data for past periods, access to which is already minimal, administrators export data. This operation to create an archive is carried out regularly with a frequency depending on the amount of information.
- For security. When writing third-party programs that use information from the database, the company avoids providing developers with access to the organization’s base. For this, what is needed in the developed program is exported to a separate storage. An application takes data from this storage without accessing the source database.
- To work with information in a different environment. An example is a large travel agency that provides tariffs and conditions to tour operators in the regions. The agency unloads its tariffs in a format that operators' systems work with. Those, in turn, load this data into their programs with the import procedure.
Export from MS Access
Access has developed many ways to export data for the user. This uploads to HTML documents, files in the form of text and xml format. An employee can send information of a given format by e-mail. In this case, the system allows you to choose in what form the data will be sent. In addition to those already mentioned above, you can upload to PDF, RTF and XPS. The generated file of the selected format is attached to the message and sent by e-mail.
Access also works with other databases and can export information for use in them using the ODBC interface. The most commonly used uploading to other programs of the Microsoft Office suite is exporting data to Excel and merging into a Word document. In Excel, data is downloaded in a table form, in Word, various documents are created according to a previously created template.
Software developers usually include the ability to export data. But you need to be prepared for the fact that sometimes some of the information may be lost. Usually this does not concern the values of the tables, but the relationships between them, and it happens if the program into which the data is imported does not support this functionality.