How to convert Btrieve files to DDF files 1

Let's see here....

I am assuming that these are Btrieve 6.15 files. If not, what version are you using?

>>Where can I get the Pervasive Btrieve ODBC Driver?

Go to GoldStar Software's site, and download the Btrieve 6.15 ODBC Driver:


Alternatively, you can download the Pervasive.SQL 2000 Workgroup version with the Pervasive SDK from Novell:


(Requires free registration)

This will allow you access to the latest version of the Pervasive engine (if you don't have a Btrieve / Pervasive engine on your system).

>>How to convert Btrieve files to DDF files?

If you do not have DDFs for the data files, then you will have some work ahead of you.

Go to and download BTSearch. This will assist you in creating your DDF files greatly. Look over the information there, and in the help file, to see what you need to do.

>>How to upload the data from Btrieve file to SQL Server7.0?

Once you have the DDFs and an ODBC driver, use DTS to transfer the information.

Thanx Vancouverite. I exactly did the same procedure you'd told. But I encountered problems, when I tried to create DDF files using BTSearch. Though I did not get any error, I was not able to view the data contents of the btrieve file.
Supposing I have few btrieve files (*.btr), Is it possible to create DDFs for *.btr files directly using BTSearch or is there any standard procedure to be followed while handling *.btr files?

Btrieve stores many of the data types in a binary format. There is no easy way to create the DDF files unless you already know the format or can get them from the original vendors. The help file in BtSearch has some sugguestions on how best to proceed. I have seen some situations however where the original programmers were very "creative" in how they designed there programs and made it impossible to use DDF files. This is very rare however. You mentioned that you created the DDF files but could not read them. What did you see when you tried?
Gil Gil Nelson
Nelson Software Solutions

What Gil said.

Also, what is the source of the data files? Some programs using Btrieve as the back-end database use their own data types (allowed with Btrieve). If the data types are non-standard, then the front-end program will need to translate the data into displayable data.

Hi
This is not a reply but a question related to what pshan74 has already posted.
I have a file with the extension '.btr'. Now iam required to read the data and transfer it to SQLServer database. I have no experience with mainframes nor do i have any idea about btrieve files.
I donot have any Btrieve or pervasive sql engine. All i know is that SQLServer supports Data Tranformation Service - DTS, which can import data from Btrieve.
So with the input i have, that is the btr file, i want to transfer the contents to SQLserver.

Can somebody help me with this?

Thanks in advance.

With regard to the last post you will need DDF files to use any 3-rd party products which includes the ODBC with Btrieve files. The DDF files contain the file, index and field information. If you don't have these you will need to either get them from the original vendors or you can create them using BtSearch which you can download at Once you have the DDF files you can also use it to export the btrieve data to dbase or ascii which could then be imported into SQLServer.
Gil Gil Nelson
Nelson Software Solutions