Recursive Database Search Script

If I understand correctly, your problem is in the Query, you can query the data base to get all the information from each row. Why would you be doing seperate queries for each cell?  You can also put the tables in an array the use a foreach loop to do each query. (I know with mysql you can get a list of table names automatically with a mysql function, I don't know if by using a query to get table names will work on access).

In any case you can have it make it work as follows:

$found = 0; // Set counter for number of search Results

//Contains all database table names
$table = array("tableName1","tableName2","tableName3");

foreach($table AS $value) //Query database for each table
{
  $Query = "Select * from $value;";

  $Result ="odbc_do($connect, $Query);

  //Find the number of field from the current table
  $numbOfFields = odbc_num_fields($Result);

  //Get the next row from the current Query
  while(odbc_fetch_row($Result))
  {
   //Loop through each cell from current row
   
    for($i = 0; $i < $numbOfFields; $i++)
    {

     //Check to see if field content matches keyword
      if(odbc_result($Result, $i) == $keyword)
      {
       $found++;//increment number found

       //Create or Add to array with row that contained keyword
       $searchresults[$found]=$Result;
       break;
      }
    }
   }
}

Now all your results should be contained in $searchreasults which should be a multi-demensional array.
I mostly use MySQL so it may need tweeking but it's the basic idea where you limit the number of queries to the number or tables you have.  You can reduce it further by using the following:

select * from table1,table2,table3;

Now with one query you got all the information from all the table but you will have to edit the above code to check for the number of fields for each result before looping through the cells.

You can use the odbc_tables() function to get a list of all the tables.

You can then use the odbc_columns() function to scan the returned table for the field names.

You could then build a single query which works SOMETHING like ...

SELECT * FROM (
SELECT T1.F1,ID FROM T1 WHERE T1.F1 LIKE something
SELECT T1.F2,ID FROM T1 WHERE T1.F2 LIKE something
SELECT T2.F1,ID FROM T2 WHERE T2.F1 LIKE something
SELECT T2.F2,ID FROM T2 WHERE T2.F2 LIKE something
)

I'm not EXACTLY sure how to join up multiple sub-selects. I don't really think that the above code is quite right.

But the point is, you do not need to store a table containing the names of the tables and the fields. This is already done by the database and most ODBC drivers provide a method of accessing that. I use this method for my database viewer. Pick a DB, pick a table, select columns, dump results.

Richard.