If you're trying to develop server-side code, not for some biggy site, I suggest you download WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PhP), or else LAMP if using LInux. It auto-configures on its own..... ?
Well, .mdb files must be changed to .csv in order to be imported by MySQL. I am under that impression. I also used MS Access databases changed to .csv files, and they seem to work well.