Converting Microsoft Works databases.... *shudder*

[GISDude]

Mike,
I totally forgot that MS Works was out there. Haven't used that one in
about 6 or 7 years. Honestly, your best bet is to convert to .csv or
some delimited .txt file. Once that is done, all your rows/columns will
be "nice and neat" .
Once that is done, (and since your client doesn't have ACCESS, try
MYSQL or POSTGRESQL(they are open source). They can handle A LOT OF
DATA, so however big your orginal DB is, you can import it to one of
these more than capable OS freebie Databases.

Good luck
Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this.  Someone I
> know is trying to move away from Microsoft Works, and I am trying to
> look into a solution that would convert their data in a lossless fashion
> to a more modern format.  The database has more than 65K rows, so
> converting it to be an Excel spreadsheet, would, AFAIK, not be an option.
>
> It would seem that MS Works can export the database as a DBF format
> database, though I have not tried it.  Before I get started, I was
> wondering if anyone has been through this problem in the past and used
> Python to solve the problem.  Knowing nearly nothing about the DBase
> family of application software, and database formats, I find myself
> feeling like the information out there is, frankly, a bit overwhelming.
>
> Would the recipe specified in the "dbf to csv" thread be useful here for
> a file in DBase IV format?  It of course uses the same extension, but I
> am not sure if the file semantics are at all similar.  The idea at the
> end would be to probably create a database on an small SQL server (like
> MySQL) and let the person access their data using ODBC on their Windows
> workstation so that they can create form letters and the like.  They do
> not have access to MS Office's Access product, nor do they wish to use
> OOo Base (and I can't say that I blame them -- it seems to crash far too
> often to be considered reliable stuff).
> 
> 	-- Mike