How To: Read MPD files

Microsoft Project from Project 98 until Project 2003 could read and write schedules as Microsoft Access database files with the extension MPD. Versions of Microsoft Project after 2003 can import projects from MPD databases but cannot create or write to them. Project 98 crates a database with a schema known as MPD8, which MPXJ does not currently support reading. Project 2000 onward uses a schema call MPD9 which MPXJ can read.

Coincidentally, Microsoft Project Server originally shared the same database schema as the MPD9 file format. This means that the MPDDatabaseReader class may also be used to read data from a Project Server SQL Server database.

Reading MPD files

The simplest way to read an MPD file is to use the UniversalProjectReader:

import net.sf.mpxj.ProjectFile;
import net.sf.mpxj.reader.UniversalProjectReader;

// ...

UniversalProjectReader reader = new UniversalProjectReader();
ProjectFile project = reader.read("my-sample.mpd");

In order for this to work the UniversalProjectReader assumes that the JDBC-ODBC bridge driver is available. As an MPD file can contain multiple projects, the UniversalProjectReader assumes that a single project is present in the file with an ID of 1. This is normally the case when a single project is saved as an MPD file.

Using MPDDatabaseReader

You can work directly with the MPDDatabaseReader class by replacing UniversalProjectReader with MPDDatabaseReader. This provides access to additional options, as described below.

Setting the database connection

Three read methods are provided by the MPDDatabaseReader class which allow you to work directly with an MPD file, either by passing in a file name a File instance or an InputStream instance. These methods use the JDBC-ODBC bridge driver to open the database. An alternative approach is for you to provide your own database connection. To that end the MPDDatabaseReader class provides two additional methods: setConnection and setDataSource which allows you to supply a JDBC Connection instance or a JDBC DataSource instance.

You can of course use this to set up your own JDBC connection to read from the MDB file, however these methods may be more useful if you wish to read data from a Microsoft Project Server database instance, which shares the same schema as the MDB file.

Selecting a project

If the MPD file contains multiple projects, you can retrieve details of the available projects using the listProjects method. This returns a map of project IDs and project names. The sample code below illustrates how to retrieve this list of projects, and select the specific project that you want to read. In this case we read each project in the file in turn.

import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Map.Entry;
import net.sf.mpxj.mpd.MPDDatabaseReader;

MPDDatabaseReader reader = new MPDDatabaseReader();
reader.setConnection(connection);
Map<Integer, String> projects = reader.listProjects();
for (Entry<Integer, String> entry : projects.entrySet())
{
   System.out.println("Project name: " + entry.getValue());
   reader.setProjectID(entry.getKey());
   reader.read();
}