I asked a question here a while back and using the answers, made some head way in figuring out how my DOS based legacy software works.
My problem: The software uses Btrieve to read/store data in .dbk files. I know this because the DDF files reference these dbk files. I found a number of ways to open btrieve data but only if they are stored in .btr files.
Anyone has any hints? I've spent considerable amount of time digging through resources but to no avail. All I need right now is to see the data stored in the dbk files in a readable format.
If your DDFs reference .DBK files, you should, using a version of Btrieve / Pervasive that supports it, be able to use ODBC to read the data.
Create the ODBC DSN pointing to your DDFs and Data Files.
Once created, use your favorite export tool to export the data to your favorite format.
Related
My office has a Filemaker database which they asked me to replace with a mySQL one. The mySQL one is now set up and running, but doesn't have exact same structure as the Filemaker one (they asked for more things to be added, redundant things were left out, etc.).
I've seen that the filemaker data can be exported as .xml files, could I use those to populate the mySQL database?
If so, I've only ever used
Cooktop,but I'm currently using mac10.6/lubuntu, is there maybe an equivalent (free) piece of software that could do that?
All suggestions are welcome.
Thanks
I can add some information about the various export formats that FileMaker provides. I've done extensive research and testing on this topic.
Below, you'll see a chart with all of the formats that FileMaker offers along the top. Along the side, you'll see various features of these file formats that are unique to FileMaker when exporting. Some are limitations of the FileMaker export process and others are general pros and cons of the format itself.
I'll explain them briefly:
Headers: column labels are exported
Delimiter: the type of separator symbol used
UTF 8/16: yes if either of these is available, could be of concern for special characters or some languages
Only 1 format: means that only one type of encoding is available
Other encoding: a list of all encoding options
Can be imported: FileMaker allows import (not important for this question)
Future proof: According to Wikipedia, format is still widely used and actively maintained
Open standard: open source format
Size: when exporting one of our tables, this was the size of the file
I would recommend also considering some of these factors when deciding which format will work for you. It will depend on the contents and type of your data.
MySQL is just the backend database, so you need a UI to perform the import. You could use FileMaker for this as well, if you set up the MySQL database as an ESS source. If you do this, then you can use familiar import steps in FileMaker to populate your new database.
This may be what the previous answer mentions, but just to designate between the ODBC insert via Execute SQL, which is limited, and External SQL Sources (ESS) that give a native UI in FM.
If the FileMaker database is hosted on a server, you could setup an ODBC link to the MySQL. You could then create a script, in FileMaker, to loop through the data, creating rows in MySQL with only the Columns you are looking to populate.
Other than that, you can export the data, from FileMaker, into many other formats including; TAB, CSV, Excel, xml and pushing it into MySQL.
A client of mime has an old program running on 4D. I am not familiar with this format, but I have 4 files; a .4DC , .rsr , .4DD and one .4DR file.
I suspect that the data is in the .4DD file. How can I extract the data?
If the 4D application does not have an export function in it then you need to go to the developer to open up the data. Data in 4D applications is accessible only to the application that created the data file. This allows self contained applications to remain proprietary. ODBC connections are great when you have access to the source code, which then lets you separate the data from it's application.
This might not solve your problem, but I hope it explains how the 4D.com product works.
The format of the data is proprietary to 4D and unlike an SQL dump the schema and the data are kept in separate files.
The .4DC contains the compiled code, the gui, and the structure (schema) of the database. The data itself is in the .4DD.
To open the data "back door" so that you can interact with it you need the .4DB which is the uncompiled structure (and code and gui). There is also likely a password required to open the .4DB in designer mode.
4D supports ODBC connections (at least in some versions). If you are lucky that may be enabled and you can access it by running the compiled application and then running your queries against it.
Well I suspect to read a 4D database, you'll need a 4D database client.
I further guess that this is obtainable in the "4D DEVELOPER STANDARD" package, buyable from the maker of 4D. See http://www.4d.com/ .
There might be other (possibly free) solutions, but as long as you don't specify what you want to achieve exactly (just read the data? update it? Modify the database structure? And on what platform?), it is hard to offer useful ideas except for "google that".
I trying to open (using 4d v12) the database with the extension .4dc (in addition there are files with extensions .4dd and .4dr).
The result is an error: You cannot convert compiled database.
Perhaps this is an old version of the database, but I could not find anything that could convert it to a newer version.
My goal is to obtain information from the database. But the problem is that I'm not good at 4d. And I don't know how to open the .4DC as part of an application.
Please help me if you know how to do it.
The .4DC is the compiled structure file. It contains the code of all of your methods and defines the structures (tables, fields) in your database. The .4DD is the actual data file. It contains the values that are stored in the database. The .4DR is the resource file.
You can't edit or convert a .4DC because it is compiled. What you need is the .4DB. It does the same thing as the .4DC (contains methods and db structure), but you can upgrade it and open it interpreted so you can edit the methods and change the database structure.
You can open the .4DC as part of an application, but you won't be able to upgrade it or edit any methods. If you are opening it with the 4D IDE you'll need the same version as created the .4DC in the first place.
You might also try the 4D knowledgebase for more info: http://kb.4d.com or read the documentation: http://doc.4d.com/Home/home.en.html
Good luck!
the .4DC is the application, it's only used to run it. As said it's compile in machine language (0 and 1) so it won't help you out. It's good to use the application, that's it.
the .4DD is the actual database behind the application.
So if you want to access only datas, you should look to this .4DD
There are also ODBC drivers that exists for 4D.
I need an alternative to exporting to a csv file. Basically, the requirement is to be able to allow the user to edit any amount of data from the database. Currently, the option is to export the data to csv and then the user can update them in Microsoft Excel. Thus, one can edit it without actually needing to have our web application installed. However, we are trying to avoid this approach due to some issues we encountered with working with CSV on Excel. Can someone recommend an alternative solution?
Most programming languages have libraries to allow you to import/export excel directly which avoids many of these issues. This means you won't have to tell you users to do special Save As when saving their files.
Java: http://poi.apache.org
Ruby: http://spreadsheet.rubyforge.org or http://roo.rubyforge.org
Google can provide options for other languages.
I have a shapefile that I would like to upload to a spatial SQL Server 2008. I have tried using this tool: SQL Server 2008 Spatial Tools. But without luck.
Does anyone know any other (free) tools for doing this?
You can use ogr2ogr to convert from shapefile to GML (or many other formats) and then use SQL Server's GeomFromGML to import. You will need to call GeomFromGML for each feature in your shapefile, but that's a relatively easy program to write.
I have written code in arcbjects for do this task. If you have license arcview or engine you can create a console application in c# and use this code: see https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/33917/how-to-import-shapefiles-into-ms-sql-2008-and-then-view-that-data-using-qgis?lq=1
UPDATE: I decided I would just point people to the official Github repo instead: https://github.com/zer0infinity/OGR2GUI
This [ogr2ogr fork] tool will attempt to parse the content of the input file (in my case, it was a shapefile) and output it as a bunch of different formats (in my case, I needed it as a CSV, but you can even export your file as a SQLite file). Unfortunately it doens't do straight up SQL, but you can do a dump from a SQLite viewer such as SQLite Browser and import it onto MS SQL. I did notice some inefficiencies when converting to SQLite (I lost some attributes/tables). I also tried MobileMapper Office (MMO) (with better luck) to export to CSV and it did preserve a lot of the data, but you'd then need to write a script to import the data to SQL. If you are going that route, let me know, I'm currently writing a VBA script to deal with the exported data from MMO.
If you're hoping to build this into your application (a script of some sort), you may have some luck trying with ogr2ogr, but you never know what the data is going to look like. documentation is found here http://www.gdal.org/ogr2ogr.html
Original answer: Save yourself sometime and just use this amazing tool: http://ogr2gui.ca/
It's based off ogr2ogr, but with a nice GUI.
I've made an app for importing shapefiles into SQL Server. It's made primarily to suit my needs but i had some spare time so i made an installer for you.
Some nice things you can do with it:
choose encoding of input shapefile
rename/remap destination table column names
choose the destination table name
set the primary key for the destination table
It has a user interface and you can download it for free.
More details can be found on my blog, here's the link: Import shapefiles into SQL Server