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ASCDUMP Btrieve File Dump Utility - Version 1.4a AscDump will dump a Btrieve file using a BASIC TYPE..END TYPE definition to define the field layout. It can download and upload ascii files to/from Btrieve files, browse Btrieve files and generate XQL table definitions for Btrieve files. INSTALLATION ============ Unzip the ASCDMP.ZIP file which contains the following files : ASCDUMP.EXE - the program file ASCDUMP.CFG - the program configuration file ASCDUMP.DOC - this document You should place the program and CFG files in a directory referenced by your PATH if you want to be able to use the program in any directory. Note that the CFG file only controls the screen colours and printer destination, the program will proceed happily if it does not find the .CFG file. INTERACTIVE USE =============== To use AscDump interactively just enter the command ASCDUMP. Dump a File ----------- Before you can dump a file you must provide : the name of the Btrieve datafile the name of the BASIC program file containing your TYPE definition the name of the TYPE within that file the name of the Output file You must also decide whether you want to include a header line in the output file. The header line will contain a comma delimited list of the field names as the first line in the output file. This is useful if you are loading the data into a spreadsheet as it gives each field a label. Note that if you leave the 'Name of TYPE Record' field blank the program will show you a list of TYPE definitions from your source file for you to pick the appropriate one. You will finally be asked if you wish to dump all the fields. Normally you will say yes, as the program cannot upload partial downloads. However, if you want to take a subset of the fields for some other purpose you can select the fields you want to download. You will be shown a list of the fields, use the return key to mark/unmark the fields to download and choose the "Proceed" option when you are done. Marked fields are indicated by a tick-mark next to them. A download may be aborted by pressing the ESCAPE key. Load a File ----------- To load a file you must specify the same information as with the Dump option with the following differences. The ASCII file must exist and must contain comma delimited records relating to the Btrieve File you are loading to. Note that you can upload data to an existing file, if the program finds a record that already exists it will update it with the data from the ASCII files. It assumes that the first key defined in your Btrieve file is the PRIMARY KEY and is unique. (See Limitations/Disclaimer) An upload may be aborted by pressing the ESCAPE key. Browse a File ------------- Having specified a Btrieve File, and associated BASIC TYPE the Browse option will display data from the file one record at a time. You can step through the records with the next and previous options, or select a record using the first index in the file. Control Characters in Strings (less than Ascii value 32) are displayed as ascii values preceded by a backslash. eg. \002 for CHR$(2) To modify data move the menu bar over the field you want to alter and press return. You can then type in numeric or string data as appropriate. Continue to modify fields in this way. When you have made all the changes you MUST choose the "Update Record" option to save the changes. Note that the program has no way of knowing whether the data you have entered makes sense, so exercise care! When selecting a record the program will pop up an input box containing the fields from the first index in the file. You can type in the desired key values at this point. The program does not look for an exact match, but retrieves the first record that is Greater Than or Equal to your input values. If you have long string fields ( > 50 ) then you should not attempt to edit them with this program. Update all Fields in a Btrieve File ----------------------------------- This option allows you to perform a "global update" on the data in a Btrieve file. You can set fields to a constant value, or to the results of an equation. You could use this to increase all prices by 10%, or set a particular field to 0. Note that this update effects ALL the records in the file, so be careful! After specifying the Btrieve file, Basic file and TYPE definition you will be taken to a screen similar to the browse screen. Here you can move the highlight bar down to the field(s) you are interested in. Pressing Return lets you enter an equation for that field. Equations may be in two forms. 1) A constant value, ie. 0, 65, 21.29 or -74. To enter a constant value, just type the number you want to set the field to. Remember, this effects every occurrence of that field in the Btrieve file. 2) An equation involving the current field (or others in the same record). Several examples of this follow (you enter everything after the equals sign) : PRICE = PRICE * 1.10 TOTVAL = QUANTITY * PRICE In the examples above, TOTVAL, QUANTITY and PRICE are fields within the TYPE definition for the Btrieve file. As each record is retrieved the appropriate value is substituted for the field name and the equation evaluated. The result is placed in the appropriate field. For STRING fields you can set a field to a constant value or the value of another field in the TYPE record. You cannot perform arithmetic on STRINGS! Some examples follow : DELETEFLAG = N FULLNAME = SURNAME, TITLE FIRSTNAME COMMENTS = "" You must not enclose the values in double or single quotes, with one exception. If you wish to set a STRING field to be empty, you must enter two double quotes as in the example for COMMENTS above. There is one special "field" that you can use in equations and that is COUNT#. This will be replaced by the current record number, ie. 1 to n where n is the number of records in the file. This may be useful if you want to generate a unique sequence number for each record. To use it just enter COUNT# in the equation just like a field name. A couple of examples are shown : SEQNUM = COUNT# SEQNUM = 10000 + COUNT# Global Update Warnings: ----------------------- You MUST NOT change any of the Primary Key values using this facility. If you do so you could end up missing records out or even in an endless loop. There is no check on overflow when performing arithmetic on fields. You cannot perform arithmetic on string fields, although you can use string fields in equations. However, if the string field does not contain numerals then the results will be zero. GENERATE XQL TABLE DEFINITION ============================= If you are using XQL this option conveniently generates the appropriate XQL CREATE TABLE statements for the specified Btrieve file. If you are generating a definition for the Btrieve file "CATANK.DB", this option will generate two files, "CATANK.XQL" and "CATANK.LOD". The .XQL file contains the CREATE TABLE statements while the .LOD file contains some Basic INPUT# statements for each field in your Btrieve File. The .LOD file can be used if you are writing a program to manipulate an Ascii dump, it saves you writing a whole lot of INPUT# statements to read the Ascii file. COMMAND LINE SWITCHES FOR INTERACTIVE USE: ========================================== /50 will set your PC into 50 line on VGA adaptors. This is intended for use with the Browse option as it allows you to see more of your record. /MBF is an optional flag that you can use to access Btrieve files that have floating point numbers stored in Microsoft Binary Format (MBF). If you use this flag ALL floating point numbers will be treated as MBF numbers. If all of your Btrieve files contain MBF numbers then you can place the line FLOAT=MBF in your ASCDUMP.CFG file. If you make this change, make sure that the ASCDUMP.CFG is in a directory pointed to by the PATH. COMMAND LINE (BATCH) USE ======================== You can use ASCDUMP from the command line for automatic or unattended downloads/uploads. It is most useful though with the /X flag as you can create a batch file to generate XQL definitions for your entire database rather than file-by-file. Any time you change your database you can rerun this batch file. The command line syntax is as follows 1) to dump a file : ASCDUMP /D BtrieveFile BasicFile BasicTYPE OutPutFile N N [/MBF] 2) to load a file from ascii to btrieve: ASCDUMP /R BtrieveFile BasicFile BasicTYPE OutPutFile N N [/MBF] 3) to generate an XQL definition file : ASCDUMP /X BtrieveFile BasicFile BasicTYPE [/MBF] 4) to enter browse mode on a btrieve file : ASCDUMP /B BtrieveFile BasicFile BasicTYPE [/MBF] 5) to enter update mode on a btrieve file : ASCDUMP /U BtrieveFile BasicFile BasicTYPE [/MBF] Warning! In command line mode minimal error checking is performed, so please be careful that you have the parameters correct! (For dumping and loading remember to specify N N as 5th and 6th parameters) Note that the /MBF flag is optional, and if used should appear as the last parameter. LIMITATIONS/BUGS ================ While the program will cope with embedded TYPEs within a TYPE definition it will not work with BC7.1 arrays in TYPES yet. You can define the fields manually however! If you pick a TYPE definition that does not match the Btrieve file then the program will get confused and very likely do strange things. This will only happen if the TYPE definition is the same length as the Btrieve file record - but is still the wrong TYPE definition. There is no support for variable length records. Maximum Record Length supported is 2048 bytes. There is no warning if you select an Output File that already exists, it will happily write over it. If you edit the ASCII file, be sure that you do not create extra blank lines at the end of the file. If this happens the program will collapse with an 'INPUT Past End' error when you reload it. The data will be loaded correctly though - it is just messy. You may have problems uploading data to an existing file if the first index defined in the Btrieve file is not a unique index. The program uses the first index to try and locate a record before inserting a new one. If the first index is non-unique then the AscDump program will repeatedly overwrite the first occurence of the index value. When uploading data to a file, the file must already exist, ASCDUMP will not create an empty file. 'Print a Record' performs no checking to see if the printer is on line. You can print to a file by changing the PRDEST= line in the ASCDUMP.CFG file. If you have indexed on part of a field then various options may not work correctly. In particular the XQL table definition and Selecting Records in Browse Mode. You can get around this by defining a different TYPE which has the Partial key defined as a separate item. If you have defined a composite Btrieve key on several string fields the program will cope with this. In the following example you have two string fields, but have defined it to Btrieve as a String Index of Length 8. The program can sort this out! TYPE RJob SectCode AS STRING * 4 JobCode AS STRING * 4 END TYPE DISCLAIMER ========== This program was written for in-house use based on our own working practices, in particular the first index of all our Btrieve files is a Unique Index. While ASCDUMP works to good effect in this environment, you may encounter problems with your setup/database design. To avoid unpleasant discoveries I strongly urge you to take a backup of your datafiles before using the upload feature (or altering records in browse mode), particularly if you have a non-unique index as the first index. User of this program acknowledges this disclaimer of warranty: "This program is supplied as is. The author disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability and of fitness of this program for any purpose. The author assumes no liability for damages, direct or consequential, which may result from the use of this program." SUPPORT ======= For all questions, bug reports, comments and suggestions, please contact: Christopher Davies Ian Davies Graphics (UK) Ltd 242 Dover House Road Putney London SW15 5DA Phone (+44) (81) 785 9257 Compuserve: 100016,1164 REGISTRATION ============ ASCDUMP is ShareWare. You may make copies of this program and give them to others as long as the documentation is provided with the program, both unaltered. If you like ASCDUMP, a registration fee of $25.00 would be appreciated. The next version is free (plus S&H). You will be able to receive support by mail or CompuServe. Please include your name, address, and current version number. (The version number may be found on the startup screen) See above for the address. HISTORY ======= 1.0 Orginal Release 1.1 Added support for CURRENCY data type Added support for files using MBF floating point numbers Added command line support for Browse Added 'Update ALL Records' facility Added ASCDUMP.INI file to remember last interactive settings. 1.1d Minor Bug Fix for Browse mode (when entering BasicTYPE) Minor Bug fix for MBF mode in configuration file 1.2b Expanded Buffer space to allow for records > 2048 bytes Introduced support for arrays in TYPE definitions 1.3 Skipped for administrative reasons! 1.4a Fixed problem with incorrectly selected field names in UPDATE ALL mode.