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DBF File Format

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    DBF File Format

    I am working with a client who has used Alpha Five V7 to create a database. We are attempting to read information from the table to put data into a different program. My client states that he believes the DBF file that Alpha Five creates is a dBase IV format, but I am unable to read the data into any programs that support dBase IV.

    I don't see any documentation on what format this DBF file is so I was hoping that someone on these message boards might know this. I see that there is an option to export the data to a .acs file, but for some reason my client is worry about doing this, so I would like to be able to read the DBF file directly.

    Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

    #2
    Re: DBF File Format

    If the dbf is not encrypted you can open it with excel.
    Andrew

    Comment


      #3
      Re: DBF File Format

      FoxPro Compatibility

      Alpha Five uses FoxPro v2.6 tables. The current versions of FoxPro ( Visual FoxPro 6 and above) have a different file format. Alpha Five cannot read these newer FoxPro formats. However, the newer versions of FoxPro can still read their old format (the format that Alpha Five uses).

      If your FoxPro application is using old style FoxPro tables (so called "free tables" in FoxPro terminology), then it would be safe for an Alpha Five application and a FoxPro application to be running simultaneously in most situations.

      The situation in which it would not be safe is if you have defined an index and used a function in the index definition that FoxPro does not understand. For example, and index on w_upper(fname) or ut(fname) + lname would cause a problem because w_upper() and ut() are Alpha Five functions that don't exist in FoxPro. So, at worst you will get an index corruption (which is easily fixed by rebuilding indexes). However, no data should be lost.

      FoxPro should see record locks applied by Alpha Five and vice versa.

      Supported By

      Alpha Five Version 5 and Above

      There can be only one.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: DBF File Format

        Thank you for the reply. I am able to open the file in Excel but I run into some problems. My client designed the database which has over 500 columns. When I open the file in Excel, I loose some of the columns because of limits in Excel. Because of this I was hoping to be able to find out the database format.

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          #5
          Re: DBF File Format

          You should be able to open these in Access as well. Excel has a row limit too, although I think it has been increased from 65k or so upto 1,000,000 in the latest release.
          Dave

          Comment


            #6
            Re: DBF File Format

            I was downloading a csv file for my banking activity the other day and brought it into Excel and saved it as a dbase IV dbf. Then I wanted to create a table from the Excel file and got a prompt from A5 that it had to be in ver 3.0 format (if my memory serves me). Which may not be related to what you are doing...
            Robin

            Discernment is not needed in things that differ, but in those things that appear to be the same. - Miles Sanford

            Comment


              #7
              Re: DBF File Format

              Travis,

              You don't mention what file formats the other system is able to import or what type of file it is.

              As mentioned above, a common file format is CSV. You could do a simple export from Alpha and hopefully the other system can import it.

              As Stan mentioned above, Alpha uses Foxpro v2.6 files. As these are pretty well known, there are also ODBC drivers if your other program can use that.

              If none of this sounds possible, then give us some more details on the specs of the other software.

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