Hello Steve,
if you are using a windows system, you can use the odbc interface which
is provided with the win32 client.
Furthermore, there is a perl port for Windows which contains a
win32::odbc module. This should allow you to do what you want.
I haven't tried the perl interface but MS Excel and MS Access via ODBC.
It has some problems, at least for me. But in princile it works. But it
is very slow.
Best regards
Gerhard

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Gerhard Rentschler            email:g.rentschler AT rus.uni-stuttgart DOT de
Gerhard Rentschler            email:g.rentschler AT rus.uni-stuttgart DOT de
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