Open Office import fails

[French]

Trying to import a .dbf table from A5v4.5 into an OpenOffice 1.01 spreadsheet fails. I filed an issue report with the OpenOffice folks, and after looking into it, they decided that the .dbf file format was non-standard. Their conclusion was that Excel and Lotus 123 open it because those products don't do adequate error checking, and thought the proper solution would be for the vendor of the product that produced the .dbf table to correct their file format. In short, OpenOffice isn't going to be able to open Alpha's .dbf files anytime soon.

I tell you this in case anyone has thoughts of migrating to OpenOffice and may believe A5's .dbf tables can be opened in OpenOffice's spreadsheet without a workaround.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Open Office import fails

Paul,

Alpha Five's DBF format matches that used by FoxPro 2.6.

This is an older, more widely recognized, version of the classic DBF format. However, it's different from the original DBF format developed by dBase, especially for memo fields.

You might try exporting the data to a different format (comma separated value, or comma quote delimited, or Excel 4) and then importing from there.

-- tom

[French]

RE: Open Office import fails

Tom,

I don't doubt what you say, and I know you can move data using a workaround. OpenOffice simply won't import the .dbf file directly. For the record, here's their response before deciding they weren't going to do anything on their end to resolve the issue:


@all: The format of this file doesn't follow the dBase specifications exactly and differs in one aspect: at file offset 8 (zero based) there is a 16-bit little-endian value telling the overall length of the header, here 162. The last byte of the header (in this case at offset 161) has to be a 0x0d, which isn't the case here. The 0x0d is at
offset 160 instead, and another 0-byte follows to pad the header. If the two values are exchanged (0-byte at offset 160, 0x0d at offset 161), then the file can be loaded. Excel seems to ignore all sanity checks (as usual), but Calc checks for the presence of the 0x0d at the end of the header.

@Paul: If you want your files to get loaded I suggest you contact the folks who are responsible for the product you're using to write proper file formats. Otherwise you'd had to use a utility that checks for the header format described above and corrects it if necessary.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Open Office import fails

Paul,

It sounds to me as though they're checking for something that may exist in the technical specs, but which is not checked by others. I have no trouble importing Alpha Five's DBF files into file viewers, other database programs, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro Pro, or even WordPerfect.

If this critical I suppose a small program could be written to reverse the two bytes they mention. You'd have to run the program against the DBF before opening with their program. If it were me, I'd probably either export to a different format, or stop using their program. I do not think it likely that Alpha Software will change the format. I've checked a couple of files here and it looks as though the format Alpha Five is using is the same as that used by Alpha Four. I can't imagine that Alpha will want to change it after all this time.

tom

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Open Office import fails

Paul,

It's interesting to me that the Windows version of StarOffice 6.0 (PP1) opens the Customers.dbf file from the Invoice sample that ships with Alpha Five, without complaining about the format of the dBase file. Maybe this information would cause the OpenOffice folks to relax a bit, to maintain compatibility, since I think much of their work is shared with Sun Microsystems, and vice versa.

-- tom

[French]

RE: Open Office import fails

Tom,

One of the primary differences between OpenOffice and Star Office 6 is that Sun provides their own package of import filters which are not shared back with OpenOffice. Perhaps it's a copyright issue.

I don't need to use OpenOffice, but as you point out, other Windows products have no difficulty dealing with Alpha's .dbf files and I was a bit surprised that OpenOffice couldn't open them in its spreadsheet. I filed an "Issue" report on their web site, and after several months, they resolved the issue by dismissing it as not their problem.

Interestingly, one of the individuals who worked on the issue reported that neither Gnumeric nor K-Spread would open the file either. Those are both Linux spreadsheet products and perhaps those working on it are primarily Linux folks who believe that the similar performance of the other Linux spreads validates their decision to not deviate from the strict .dbf standard they've obviously used.

There are certainly work-arounds for those who feel compelled to use OpenOffice. I just thought a heads-up was in order so other folks who may try to move an Alpha .dbf file into OpenOffice's spreadsheet didn't think it was just them having a bad day.