I have an application that needs data migrated out of it. This was a custom software job done years ago using pervasive 6.x is my best guess. I can only find BTR files and no DDF file. The people who created the software cannot even properly retrieve the data but have done so exporting the data into a csv file. I don't mind how I get the data so long as I can get it! Any help is appreciated since reading some posts has only made me think that this is going to be a very big headache to do so!

Thanks

I'm not sure I understand what you need. You said "The people who created the software cannot even properly retrieve the data but have done so exporting the data into a csv file."
Is the data correctly exported to a CSV file? What format are you looking for from the export?
Do you know the exact record structure (down to the byte)? If so, you can create (or have created) DDFs that define the records. Once you've got the DDFs, you can use any number of tools.

A third party to the company i am dealing with created a custom software package for my client. They will do a data dump for the client but it is never done 100% correct and they never give all the tables.

I donnot know the record structure at all, I have downloaded and tried many migration tools and pervasive psqlv9 to try and at least read the data but with no luck.

I assume that the software would need some sort of data dictionary file of some sort, was there a different file used in older versions? Is there a typical name for the DDF? There are a lot of files with what look to be table names in the file structure but have no extension at all.. is it possible that the software uses the files without an extension?

It really seems as though these people have tried to make it very hard to extract the data as to make sure the client could not look to anyone else to get the data which is very frustrating. I am willing to compensate if someone thinks they can figure this one out.

Thanks

It's very possible that the developer of the application made it difficult to extract the data. I don't know that they did but I have heard some vendors don't want the data accessible from anything other than the application.

Without the record structure, getting correct/complete data is going to be difficult. Is it possible to get the table structure from the developer?

It is possible for a software package to use files with no extension and I know of a couple. The typical name for the DDFs are:
FILE.DDF
FIELD.DDF
INDEX.DDF
There may be other *.DDF files but they aren't usually required.

Btrieve itself does not require a data dictionary. This is because the application is responsible for parsing the data. ODBC/SQL requires the Data Dictionary so it knows the data types and sizes of the fields.

If you need to build DDF files you can take a look at BtSearch at www.nssdd.com. It will allow you to analyze the structure and build the DDf files.

Gil