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Recovering data from Very Old Btrieve

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dbgirod

Technical User
Aug 29, 2001
6
US
I've been given the task of recovering information stored in a Btrieve format. I want to be able to drop the information into Access for better control. This home-made program was written back in 1994? The people who created it are no longer around. The program uses Magic 2.0, yes, 2.0. There is no option to print reports to a file, the only options that I am given is to view or print only. I am totally lost. Any information at all would be greatly appreciated.
 
Get a copy of the Pervasive.SQL 2000 SDK and it comes with an engine that will allow you to access the data and probably export it. You will need a file layout or to create DDFs for which there are several posts in these forums and there are tools and docs in the SDK which will help as well as several 3rd party utilities that can be used - but use them carefully. The application should be able to be run against Pervasive.SQL 2000i with no changes so you could use it while working on this. You may need consulting help to manage this if you don't have the source for the app, access to the original developer, or at least record layouts. You need to be careful since Magic used some special data types that aren't too standard for Btrieve, Access, or ODBC. In many senses you'll be taking a step backwards to move to Access since it doesn't work particularly well with large sets of data or more than about 3 to 5 simultaneous users. If that is not a consideration then Access might not be a bad choice, but if you can create good DDFs you can leave it in Btrieve, use Pervasive.SQL and still access the data via Access which would be the best of all three worlds.

Pervasivite

Pervasivite
 

I've worked with Magic for a long time. Can't remember v2, but I still have somw v3 stuff around. If you want to e-mail the ??ctl.dat, I'll see if I can get anything usefull out.

Glynn
 
You might take a look at BtSearch at If you don't have the DDF files it can help you analyze your btrieve files to create them. Once created you can use it to export to dbase or ascii format which can then be easily imported into Access.

Gil
 
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