Is there any way to access that *.DB file using Sybase toolkit or Perl DBI, etc?

Question

A medical office that I do work for uses MIS that does not have ODBC. There is an export function, however, and it seems to dump it into a "export.DB" file. In Windows, that is traditionally a Paradox database; however, in snooping around the directory architecture, it looks like there's a portable Sybase server. Is there any way to access that *.DB file using Sybase toolkit or Perl DBI, etc?

Answer 1

It's not a direct answer, but as an intermediate step it might help.

You might try converting to a more accessible format using a tool (not free) such as:

ABC Amber Paradox

If you convert to MDB for example, it's relatively straightforward to access with perl DBI on windows.

Is this a one-shot conversion or repeated/regular accesses?

Answer 2

Unfortunately, *.db could be anything: Berkeley DB, Paradox, DB III, or a proprietary format. If you're lucky, it's none of these, and is a plain old text file (with delimiters or fixed width). I would also think it somewhat strange to see a mixture of Paradox and Sybase in the same application (as in: a Sybase backend producing a Paradox export file, unless this is a specific export mode).

Do you have more information about what engine is producing the data file? You mention Paradox and Sybase: are you sure it's one of these?

Have you tried looking at the file directly, in something like NotePad (or WordPad if the file is large)? Is it text or gibberish? If gibberish, do you see anything in the first line or so that gives you a clue about its format?