microsoft database access engine
What's New? Discover a rare gem! Our 3-part interview series with Kalyan Chatterjee from the Bengal Film Archive is now live on YouTube
ABOUT US
What's remembered, lives. What's archived, stays. Despite all our interest in nostalgia and passion for movies, too little has been done to document the history of Bengal's cinema from the previous century. The pandemic came as a wake-up call for us. As a passionate group of film enthusiasts, we decided to create a digital platform that inspires artists and audiences alike. That's how Bengal Film Archive (BFA) was conceived as a bilingual e-archive. At this one-stop digital cine-cyclopedia, we have not just tried to archive facts, trivia, features, interviews and biographical sketches but also included interactive online games regarding old and contemporary Bengali cinema
OUR YouTube SPECIALs
SOUND OF MUSIC
Sound of Music

Since the advent of the talkie era, playback has played a big role in Bengali cinema. From Kanan Devi’s Ami banaphool go to Arati Mukhopadhyay’s Ami Miss Calutta  our films have a song for every emotion. In this segment, BFA tunes in to the music composers, singers and lyricists who made all that happen. The bonus is a chance to listen to the BFA-curated list of hits across seven decades!

Download the redistributable from Microsoft’s official site, test a query against a messy Excel file, and watch your manual import tasks disappear. Have you run into the 32-bit vs. 64-bit error? Let us know in the comments below how you resolved it.

Demystifying the Microsoft Access Database Engine: Your Bridge to Heterogeneous Data

Think of it as a for data. It allows Excel to open a DBF file, allows Access to link to a text file, and allows PowerShell or Python to treat an Excel sheet like a database table.

Despite its modest name, this engine is not just for .accdb files. It is a versatile data access layer that allows Windows applications to read and write to a wide variety of file-based data sources.

In this post, we’ll break down what the engine actually is, when to use it, and how to avoid the common pitfalls (like 64-bit vs. 32-bit hell). At its core, the Microsoft Access Database Engine is a set of Component Object Model (COM) components that facilitate data access between Microsoft Office applications and external data sources.

October 26, 2023 | Reading Time: 4 minutes

With the ACE engine, you can execute a simple SQL SELECT statement directly against a worksheet:

If you’ve ever been tasked with extracting data from an Excel spreadsheet into a SQL Server table, or pushing CSV logs into a legacy Access database, you have likely crossed paths with a small but powerful piece of technology: the (formerly known as the Access Connectivity Engine or ACE).

OUR FILMS
This archive is essentially a celebration of cinema from Bengal through words and still images. Yet, no celebration of cinema is complete without a tribute from moving images. In this section, BFA presents short films about unsung foot soldiers, forgotten studios and ageing single screens that have silently contributed to make cinema larger-than-life. For us, their unheard stories deserve to be in the limelight as much as those of the icons who have created magic in front of the lens.
BFA Originals
Lost?

The iconic Paradise Cinema has been a cherished part of Kolkata's cine history. Nirmal De’s Sare Chuattor marked its first Bengali screening in 1953, amidst a legacy primarily dedicated to Hindi films. From the triple-layered curtains covering its single screen to the chilled air from the running ACs wafting through its doors during intervals, each detail of Paradise’s majestic allure is still ingrained in the fond memories of its patrons. One such patron is Junaid Ahmed. BFA joins this Dharmatala resident as he recollects his days of being a witness to paradise on earth in this Bijoy Chowdhury film

House of Memories
House of Memories

Almost anyone with a wee bit of interest in cinema from Bengal can lead to Satyajit Ray's rented house on Bishop Lefroy Road. But how many know where Ajoy Kar, Asit Sen, Arundhati Devi or Ritwik Ghatak lived? Or for that matter, Prithviraj Kapoor or KL Saigal during their Kolkata years? In case you are among those who walk past iconic addresses without a clue about their famous residents, this section is a must-watch for you. We have painstakingly tried to locate residential addresses of icons from the early days of their career and time-travelled to 2022 to see how the houses are maintained now.