Porting from MS Access 2007 to PostgreSQL

Hi,

Disclaimer: Not a DBA, nor I am not a DB guy, so please excuse any ignorance
in the below.

*1. Background*

We have a MS Access 2003 database that we are using to manage registration
and workshop/accommodation allocation for a conference. The database isn't
particularly complicated (around 20 tables or so), nor is the dataset large
(largest table has around 13,000 records, most of the others have around
5000 or so records.)

The structure is a bit convoluted though (mostly for historical reasons),
and most of the queries we use are quite join-heavy. Some of these seem to
take longer than you'd expect them to, for such a small dataset.

The database design is a bit quirky - there's heavy use of varchars for many
things, stacks of NULLs everywhere, and not really much use of
validation/constraints.

*2. MS Access to MySQL *

Recently, this was ported over from a pure-Access database to a Access
front-end over a MySQL backend on somebody's desktop, mostly to provide
multi-user capabilities. I've been told automated tools were used for this,
so I assume we weren't using too many MySQL-specific features.

*3. MySQL to Postgres*

I recently looked at moving this over to a PostgreSQL in a proper server.
Postgres was chosen mainly for convenience since we already have a Postgres
instance setup there (used for some Django projects).

I tried a MySQL to PostgreSQL conversion using Enterprise DB's Migration
Studio, hit an issue with two of the tables complaining about CLOB's...

*4. MS Access to Postgres*

Anyhow, somebody else suggested it might be better to just go straight from
the original MS Access database to PostgreSQL.

My first question is, what is the current recommended procedure for this?

I saw this page from 2001:

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Microsoft_Access_to_PostgreSQL_Conversion

and the tool referenced there appears to lead to a 404 page.

I also saw the tools referenced there:

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Converting_from_other_Databases_to_PostgreSQL#Microsoft_Access

and most of them appear quite dated, from the MS Access 97 era.

Has anybody had any experiencing doing a similar port (Access 2007 to
Postgres) recently, what tools did you use, were there any gotchas you hit
etc? Or just any general advice at all here?

*5. Postgres Specific Features*

Once the port is done, I assume they'll probably be some work involved to
clean it up, and leverage on some of Postgres's features. In particular, I'm
hoping to at least get some decent data validations/constraints in.

The issue is we still need to maintain compatibility, where we can, with the
Access frontend.

That and hopefully clean up some of the queries a bit, and try and figure
out why some forms in Access are taking so long to load.

Any particularly good books here that you'd recommend? I saw some
Postgres-specific books on Amazon, but none seem to have particularly good
reviews (or were rather simplistic). Recommendations?

Cheers,
Victor