Extract pascal database files to ASCII or other format

Andrew Y F Wong

Delphi Developer

Wed, 18 Jun 1902 08:00:00 GMT

Extract pascal database files to ASCII or other format

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HELP,

I'm in the process of extracting information form an pascal database
structure. The company that originally wrote the product has gone
bank rupt. I would liek to know if there is any way of extracting
the database information, with it's field attributes. For example,
field type and length

If there's any one with some idea, please drop me a note

Regards
andrew.w...@planex.com

Mike Copela

Delphi Developer

Wed, 18 Jun 1902 08:00:00 GMT

Re:Extract pascal database files to ASCII or other format

Quote

> I'm in the process of extracting information form an pascal database
> structure. The company that originally wrote the product has gone
> bank rupt. I would liek to know if there is any way of extracting
> the database information, with it's field attributes. For example,
> field type and length

> If there's any one with some idea, please drop me a note

Sure it can be done, but there are varying degrees of difficulty and
complexity, depending on what you know about the "database": there is no
such thing as a "Pascal database", per se, and it can only be something
like a typed file of data or some data which was defined by the Pascal
application which wrote the file. If you have the Pascal source file, it
would be fairly simple to do whatever you need.
OTOH, it might have been a Pascal program writing some standard
database file format - such as dBase files, Paradox databases, or
something else which has a defined format. If so, your task is only to
get the specs for that file format and write an application which
converts the data and fields to whatever you want.
Another possibility - most difficult, I'm afraid - is that you don't
know anything about the file format and must "reverse engineer" its
capabilities or determine data fields and formats from a brute force
analysis of the data bytes. That's a messy and unpleasant task, but it's
your only option if you know nothing about the file format and data
fields. There must be _some_ logic to the data, and "all you have to do"
is decrypt it...

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