[olug] Database export problem

[Eric Lusk]

I've talked to their tech support, and they apparently
wrote this program from the ground up.  This is
probably the reason my client is changing to another
program; they could have made their software more
reliable by using SQL instead of reinventing the
wheel.  But they probably WANTED it to be proprietary;
keeps your customers from leaving.
So far I've found I can change what the export
function in the program sends to an ASCII file, but I
can only change so much; I'm still stuck with 3 or 4
rows of info at one time.  Looks like a "find and
delete" issue; will probably have to have a script go
through and delete the garbage characters out of their
main file, then hope it looks right in Excel, or I'll
be spending the next few days copying and pasting. :(
Well, at least I get paid by the hour for this...

--- Dave Thacker <dthacker9 at cox.net> wrote:

> 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
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