MATLAB: Parsing the Ms access data base

parsing the ms access data base

I have a database with two tables. I tried to extract the data from the tables and i was able to extract also using the command below,
rs=invoke(hopen,'OpenRecordset','Data');  
fieldlist=get(rs,'Fields');
ncols=get(fieldlist,'Count');
for c=1:double(ncols)
       fields{c} = get(fieldlist,'Item',c-1);
       resultset.columnnames{c} = get(fields{c},'Name');
  end;
  nrecs=0;
   while get(rs,'EOF') == 0
        nrecs = nrecs + 1;
        for c=1:ncols
           resultset.data{nrecs,c} = get(fields{c},'Value');
        end;
        invoke(rs,'MoveNext');
   end
Only problem is when I have a multiple values in the cell i can able to extract only first element in the cell.
For example,
in the above figure, the column carsSelected consists of multiple value in the cell. In this case i cannot able to extract all the elements in the cell? How can I do this?
Thanks a lot

Best Answer

Well, I learnt something today. Access does allow multivalued fields. However, it does so by hiding much of the machinery that you'd use in a normal database design (that is it hides the table modeling the relationship together with the queries required to retrieve the records).
It looks like you're using DAO to connect to the database. When I first tried, using the older ADO technology, the value property of the field is the display string (i.e. '1; 2; 3; 4'). However, with the newer DAO, according to MSDN the value property of a multivalued field of a recordset is itself a recordset. So to retrieve all the values, you'll need another loop iterating over this child recordset.
So I assume this will work:
    for c=1:ncols
           if fields{c}.IsComplex  %true for multivalued
               rs = fields{c}.Value;
               value = [];
               rs.MoveFirst;
               while ~rs.EOF
                   subfield = get(rs.Fields, 'Item', 0);
                   value = [value, subfield.Value];
               end
               resulset.data{nrecs, c} = value;
           else
               resultset.data{nrecs,c} = fields{c}.Value;
           end
     end
Note that you can replace most of the get(...) access by direct dotted access as I've done above. The exception appears to be the Item property that matlab refuses to see other than with get.
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