hi

I'm sorry but I know absolutely nothing about Clipper.  I am currently
writing a system with SQLServer 7 as the backend.  The users would like
the data held in the current system, using Clipper(v5 I think) moved to
the SQLServer database.

Could anyone enlighten me whether this would be possible?  Can data
from Clipper be exported as text delimited files?  If not, what file
formats does Clipper export in?

thanks in advance
lou

Sent via Deja.com http://www.*-*-*.com/
Before you buy.

Clipper data is just DBF files (dBase III according to the header) and
they can easily be exported to just about any kind of text data you
want with many off-the-shelf utilities.  If you're migrating the data
you probably don't care what order the records appear in these text
files, so you can even ignore the indexes (.NTX, .CDX and others).

The only snag you might run into is with memo fields/files since there
are so many different formats, and the variable length data doesn't fit
nicely a standard comma-delimited or SDF file.  If you do have memo
data, I'm sure somebody here could come up with a utility to export it
to a second ASCII file of a format you could import.  Just let us know
what the extensions of the files are, if any (.DBT, .FPT, etc.).

HTH,
--
Ray Marron

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

Clipper isn't what you seem to think it is. Clipper is a programming
language. Clipper compiled applications are the things that may or may not
support a form of data export (just like "C applications" may or may not
support a form of data export).

However, all that said, most Clipper applications use the supplied database
drivers (or a variation of those drivers) and so will be using DBF files
(AKA dBase files) for data storage. So, if you can work out the logical
mapping of the data from the physical mapping found in the DBF files
associated with the application you should be able to find no end of tools
to import the data in SQLServer.

--
Take a look in Hagbard's World: |   w3ng - The WWW Norton Guide reader.
http://www.acemake.com/hagbard/ |     eg - Norton Guide reader for Linux.
http://www.hagbard.demon.co.uk/ |    weg - Norton Guide reader for Windows.
Free software, including........| dgscan - DGROUP scanner for Clipper.

Whats the front end?

--

-Dirk

[FUNCky Support Team]
[dLESKO Inc.]

 <-- Got FUNCky? Get it now at http://www.funcky.com. FUNCky Rocks! -->

| hi
|
| I'm sorry but I know absolutely nothing about Clipper.  I am currently
| writing a system with SQLServer 7 as the backend.  The users would like
| the data held in the current system, using Clipper(v5 I think) moved to
| the SQLServer database.
|
| Could anyone enlighten me whether this would be possible?  Can data
| from Clipper be exported as text delimited files?  If not, what file
| formats does Clipper export in?
|
| thanks in advance
| lou
|
|
| Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
| Before you buy.

Louise,

Do I understand correctly that the data will not be moved to SQL
only once, but on regular basis ( let say daily ) ?

If it is only once you could use "Import & Export" utility from MS SQL 7.
If it is on regular basis than the answer is more complicated.

Regards,
George.

You can use DTS (In Enterprise Manager/Tools Menu) to read the Clipper
files directly into SQL tables, if they have the same structure.  Make
sure you have Service Pack 1 installed first, though.  DTS will *not*
work until you do.

jdm

Clipper uses standard dbf files ( from dbase 3..5 ).
There are at least 2 ways to get the data into sqlserver:

1. Take dbu.exe and export the clipper data into fixes-size testfiles

2. Take any tool ( ex. Access ) that can access dbf-files and sqlserver
 via ODBC ?) and import it this ways.

Andreas Moroder