DDF Problems/Questions

[matzos]

I'm new to Pervasive and have to convert a btrieve .DBF to Access. My company has done this for years using existing DDFs that were created 3 programmers ago but now I have to convert a new table that does not have a DDF identity.

How do you create a DDF to establish an ODBC link?

Please advise. Thanks.

 

[mirtheil]

You didn't mention what version of Pervasive you have so it's going to be hard to say for sure. There are several ways to create the DDFs for an ODBC link.
Regardless of the method, you will need to know the exact structure of the record.
The first is to use SQL Create Table statements. This is the fastest way since you can set the Create Table statements up and then run all of them, one after another.
The second is to use the Create Table Wizard (if you're using Pervasive.SQL 2000) or DDF Ease (in Pervasive.SQL 7.0).
There are third party DDF Creation tools like DDFMaker and others available on the Pervasive COmponent ZOne (

http://www.pervasive.com/componentzone)

There are other ways when using Pervasive.SQL 2000. There is a new interface called DTI and DTO. DTI is geared for VC while DTO is geared for VB. Each of those are described in the Pervasive.SQL 2000 SDK.

 

[grnelson]

You can take a look at BtSearch at

http://www.nssdd.com.

It helps you analyze your existing Btrieve files and helps you create the DDF files. Once created it also allows you to export to dbase or ascii formats which can then be imported into Access. Gil

 

[Pervasivite]

However you create your DDFs make sure you run them through the consistency checker in the PCC before using them (they should be perfect if you used SQL queries in the PCC to create them as the SQL engine - the SRDE - creates the DDFs and Btrieve tables simultaneously and in sync when you do that) as there are several tools that use the transactional/Btrieve API to create the files/tables and the DDFs seperately and so are not guaranteed that they are accurate or in sync at all times.

Pervasivite