Help ! What are *.DAT files ?

[hiptino]

I discovered that most Medium-Scale Business Accounting Packages(e.g SAGE, PEACHTREE) uses .dat as their data files. Also I don't think they use any Database Management System(eg Access, Sybase etc) to manage data. So its easy to code backup/restore routines.
I prefer this because its kinda self-contained, compared to using, may be Access(you have to backup the whole .mdb)

I know you can use text files as your database, but won't have the functionality of a DBMS.
Are these .dat files encrypted text files ?

Suppose you want a self-contained application(no DBMS), what technology do you use to manage your data ?

 

[tmcneil]

These *.dat files ahould be opened in notepad or wordpad to see how they are setup. They are just datafiles that maybe tab, comma or space delimited depending on how the creator produced them. You could easily bring them into excel or even access to work with them. I would check them out in Wordpad, just look for All Files when on the Open Dialog box.

Do NOT Save the files while you are in wordpad.

Once you know how they are set up, you should bring them into Access by importing them and then do your maintenance from there. Or bring them into excel by Importing and do some of your preliminary maintenance before bringing them into access.

The DAT files maybe a product of some RDBMS system that your customer uses to manage the data. There are a lot of packages out their and some unfortunately use proprietary data formats. An RDBMS system is the way to go. Good Luck.