Subject Re: Porting dBASE III to SQL?
From Mervyn Bick <invalid@invalid.invalid>
Date Thu, 17 May 2018 10:06:36 +0200
Newsgroups dbase.getting-started

On 2018-05-16 3:14 PM, Scott Yembrick wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I have a LIMS system consisting of multiple .dbf, .txt, .pdf, .xls files all linked in a complex architecture. I need to port it to SQL without loosing number, text, graphics data for any of the several hundred thousand experiments. Is this possible? Has it already been accomplished?

It depends on which SQL server you are migrating to but there may be a
suitable datapump available.   There is a program in the dUFLP (dBASE
Users Function Library Project) to move data from .dbf files to MySQL.
There is a commercial datapump available to move data from .dbf files to
Firebird and there may well be datapumps from .dbf to other SQL servers
available.   Once you've decided on the SQL server a bit of Googling
should sort that out.

The .txt, .pdf and .xls files could be stored in BLOB-type fields in SQL
RDBMS  although it is perhaps more usual to store these files on the
server outside the control of the SQL server with references to them in
fields in the data table.

It should be possible to go the DIY route but this would depend on the
number of tables and the amount of time you can spare. :-)  Without a
program to automate the process the creation of the tables on the SQL
server is what takes the time.  The actual transfer of the data doesn't
take long and dBASE can be left to churn away unattended for really long
files once the groundwork has been done..

Mervyn