Hi everyone, I am a new comer. our company has purchased RETAIL PRO 8.3 and the developer said the underlying database is BTRIEVE. The extensions of the files are .DAT, .DIA and .IX. Could anyone please tell me which version of btrieve are they using and how can i get access to them by using DELPHI 7 as the development tool ? Many thanks.

The easiest way to check the version of Btrieve being used is to look at one (or more) of the following files:
WBTRV32.DLL - 32 bit Windows interface DLL
W3BTRV7.DLL - 32 bit Windows interface DLL
WBTRCALL.DLL - 16bit Windows interface DLL
BTRIEVE.EXE - DOS version of Btrieve

Once you know what version you've got, that will help you determine what options you have for accessing from Delphi 7. For example, if it's a DOS applicaiton, you'd have to get a Windows version of Btrieve to access the data. If it's Btrieve 6.15, then you would probably be limited to the Btrieve API. If it's later versions like Pervasive.SQL 2000i or V8, then you might be able to use ODBC (or PDAC) if you also have DDFs.

Betrieve files have a .BTR extention for sure...So I doubt your files could be Dbase 4 or some other find.

Thanks & Regards
-Chanda R Patel-
http://patelplanet.com

Actually, Btrieve files do not have an inherent extension. There are a number of applications that use BTR but they could also use MKD, DAT, DB, or others. I've used MGC in one of my personal apps and have even seen an app that used no extension on the data file. You just can generalize that all Btrieve files have a BTR extension.

Thanks all. I will check it first. One more question, are there any tools for reading btrieve files can be downloaded from the internet ? Thanks a lot.

There are a number of tools but most of them will require DDFs. Btrieve does not store any field information in the data file. Some of the tools will allow you to create DDFs but you'll need to know the structure of the tables.
For some of the tools, check out the
Pervasive ComponentZone.

Hello,

You may also want to check Bill Bach's Web site at
http://www.goldstarsoftware.com/download.asp

Bill has some useful utilities for working with Btrieve files.

Regards,
Tim Meiers
Pervasive Technical Publications