I have a customer who is using pervasive sql.8 as a backbone to a system called AutoEDMS. I am not familiar with pervasive at all ( I am coming from SQL and Oracle background). I need to export some data to ascii or open the db in another db (access, sql, oracle, etc).
I logged in to the control center on the server and I see a local engine with only the demodata registered. I cannot see the actual database autoedms is using. Unfortunately the system administrator (IT) left the company and no one has a clue how to administrate the database.
Customer mentioned something about rdb file as the database files. I could not find any documentation about RDB and pervasive sql on the web.
Any idea why is the db not registered and what is the connection between the pervasive sql db and rdb files?
How can I open the rdb file or load it in the control centre?
Looking at the hex dump it looks all ascii, but I am not sure.
Please advise.

Thank you.

PSQL databases are not automatically added in the PCC. You would need to add it manually. Most applications do not need or use databases because they access the data files directly through the Btrieve API.
If you have DDF files for the database files, you can add a database to the PCC using those DDFs and data files.
Once you have a database in PCC, you can use any of your favorite tools to export the data.

Thank you mirtheil,

Can you be morespecific about what you mean by:
"Most applications do not need or use databases because they access the data files directly through the Btrieve API.
"

are you saying they can manage the data without a database? again, I am new to btrieve/prevasive and in my world or relational databases, data is stores in tables in tablespaces in a database.

Please advise.
Thank you.

With Pervasive.SQL, there are two types of interfaces. One is Btrieve and the other is Relational (mainly through ODBC).

For a Pervasive.SQL database, each "table" is a separate data file.

Applications that use Btrieve do not need a "database" because they open the data file directly.

The Relational engine uses DDFs to set up a database with table, view, and stored procedure type objects.

Goldstar Software has a very good article on this and what you can do. It's at http://goldstarsoftware.com/papers/A...taFromODBC.pdf