We are currently using Macola Progression and Crystal Reports. We have 30,000+ product records currently in Btrieve format(.BTR) and are only using ~2,500 of them currently. I was hoping to be able to extract the files to a common format(ASCII, odb...) that can then be imported into Access, SAS, ETC... This would also make report generating much more simpler and faster for me as I could use SQL commands at that point. I would then archive the database files and remove them from Progression. That way only the current products would be available with Progression and the product history could then be accessed via ODBC and VB, with embedded sql...or similar code.

Resources found so far:
http://www.nomad.ee/btrieve/convert.html

Any comments or suggestions are very appreciated.

First, What version of Pervasive.SQL are you using?
Second, Why export? Use the Pervasive ODBC driver and access the data directly to do the reports.
As far as exporting the data, you can use any number of tools if you can access the data through ODBC? If you only have Btrieve access to the files, you'll be limited to whatever tools Macola provides (or you'll need to create DDFs and then use ODBC).

Thanks for the reply!

1.) The version is SQL.2000, the Pervasive control panel reads 7.82...
Pervasive was unknown to me until this week...so I am a little slow.
It definitly loads Pervasive SQL 2000 at boot.

2.)
a. Well, first of all the company dropped Macola support a couple years back because they are still using Novel on a Pentium1. I currently am evaluating different options for them. I have been thinking of using a combination of Linux, MySQL, apache, PHP, Java or VB, and OpenOffice.org. I don't like the limitations of Macola so I was thinking of an alternative ERP as well.

b.
I have located the drivers to establish an ODBC connection. I have not accessed the database yet because I don't want to interfere with the server during office time. I have also located the DDF files to attempt the conversion.

Another Question:
If I can establish connection with the server will that allow complete manipulation of the data in openoffice Base? For instance, can I edit prices and then have them shown in Macola? Or is it simply just to generate reports?

If you've got the DDFs and an ODBC driver, you can export the data using any ODBC compliant tool.
The application you use will determine what you can do in terms of data manipulation. For example, Crystal Reports cannot update data but Access can report and update data.
I've not worked with OpenOffice so I'm not sure how it works with ODBC.

Thats exactly what I needed to know. Thanks for your time and I'll let you know how it turns out. The more I use openOffice the more I think that any company that pays for MS Office is crazy. The only applications it seems that MS has unique now is Outlook and Project. Though I think that Outlook maybe in for some trouble with Thunderbird.