have an access database that was being used on a windows server in conjunction with asp. And now i want to switch to a unix server and use jsp or php , would i have to make any changes to the database or could it remain exactly the same?What i mean to say would the odbc driver have to be registered on the unix machine in some way?

Do you mean you want to 1. run the Access database on a Unix server, or 2. you want to connect from the Unix server to the Access database on your Windows computer?

Answers to each below:

1. You cannot run Access without Windows. (well, you sort of can, using Wine (www.winehq.org), but it is not likely to work well). Fortunately, there are many other databases you can use on a Unix machine, and it is fairly easy to export data from Access to these other databases. (PostgreSQL (www.postgresql.org) is my favorite, but you can also use MySQL (www.mysql.com).

2. If you install UnixODBC (http://www.unixodbc.org/), then you can connect from your Unix server to any Windows datasource on the network. I recommend this only if you are absolutely unable to transport your database to a Unix database. It will become the one bottleneck that slows down your server more than anything else.