PARADOX 4 BLOB FIELDS

[KGC]

Can anybody give me some hints as how I could retrieve data from Paradox 4 BLOB fields/MB files. Years ago we used to use the Borland 16 bit database engine in conjunction with Visual Basic 3 - this obviously had functions which could access the BLOBS.
We now use VB6 and would like to be able to extract BLOB data from some historical Paradox tables, but find that the 16 bit engine no longer works. Things like Access Jet don't seem to support the BLOB - do I need an updated 32 bit BDE or DLL? or is there any easy way of reading the MB files directly (if there is any way of extracting the byte offset from the DB file ?).
Any help would be very much appreciated.

 

[Langley]

What do you mean the 16bit engine won't work? Paradox 4 runs fine under most versions of windoze if you issue the correct command line arguments. Try starting it with the command line argument:

-extk 16000

Once you get Paradox up and running, you should be able to export the basic data to an ascii file, then write a short PAL script to extract the Memo (BLOB) field data.

Mac

Mac

"Strange women lying in ponds and distributing swords is no basis for a system of government" - Dennis, age 37

mailto:langley_mckelvy@cd4.co.harris.tx.us

 

[KGC]

Thanks for the reply,
I'm not using the actual Paradox EXE and indeed don't have access to it anyhow. Our old 16 bit code used to call functions from PXENGWIN.DLL (documented in an SDK from Borland). This 16 bit DLL can't be called from VB6 for example. I'd really like to know if there is a comparable 32bit DLL that is supported/documented by Borland or Corel.

 

[Langley]

Hmmm... I don't know, but the 32 bit version of the BDE will handle the older tables, so there is hope. If no one here knows, you would probably have more luck in a Delphi forum.

Mac

"Strange women lying in ponds and distributing swords is no basis for a system of government" - Dennis, age 37

mailto:langley_mckelvy@cd4.co.harris.tx.us

 

[JoeNg]

I believe the latest version of Pdox Engine is 3.x that was released in the early 90s.

You can use ODBC with VB6 to access Pdox tables. Which means you will have to do a rewrite of your application. Also, you could lose some functionaries without the Paradox Engine.