[olug] Database export problem

[Dave Thacker]

On Thursday 06 October 2005 17:22, Eric Lusk wrote:
> I'm trying to export a proprietary database format so
> that it can be read by Excel.  
Is it possible your vendor is using something common, such as Berkely DB?

> The standard format of 
> the database files gives lots of garbage from carriage
> returns, spaces, etc., in Linux or Windoze.

Sounds like a job for perl.  Or awk if you're old-school.
> The program itself has an export option, but that only
> exports 3-4 fields to an tab-delimited file.  I'm
> going to try and modify the export options tonight and
> keep my fingers crossed.

> Anyone else have any ideas about removing the garbage
> from a proprietary file?  I dread telling the client
> they'll have to manually input 9000 clients....

If you can't unload it, can you query against it for the fields you want and 
redirect the query results into a flat file?  

Good Luck!

DT