World of Shareware - Software Farm 2/wosw_2.zip/wosw_2/DATABASE/PARADUMP.ZIP/PARADUMP.DOC

Text File | 1992-07-18 | 17KB | 463 lines

PROGRAM:       PARADUMP.EXE version 1.05
               Copyright (c) 1992 by Thomas A. Lundin.
               All Rights Reserved.
DESCRIPTION:   Paradox Data Export Program
RELEASE DATE:  7/18/92
AUTHOR:        Thomas A. Lundin
               16267 Husdon Avenue
               Lakeville, MN 55044
PHONE:         [phone] (8am-5pm Central, weekdays)
               [phone] (nights and weekends)
REGISTRATION:  $25 per copy (site licenses available)

ABSTRACT:
     PARADUMP is a stand-alone program which exports Paradox 3.0/3.5
     database tables into any of five different formats: fixed-length
     fielded ASCII, comma/quote-delimited ASCII, comma-delimited ASCII,
     tab-delimited ASCII, and WordPerfect 5.1 secondary merge format.

REVISION HISTORY:
     1.05 7/18/92   Fixed bug for alpha fields >127 characters
     1.04 6/30/92   Fixed bug for >32K records
     1.03 6/9/92    Added output count, redirected structure output
     1.02 5/25/92   First shareware release


PARADUMP.EXE is distributed as shareware. It is not free software. If you
continue to use this program beyond a 30-day trial period, you are required
to register it. The registration fee for this version is $25 per copy. Upon
registration, you will receive the most recent version of the program
without the compliance message. Make checks payable to Thomas A. Lundin
(U.S. funds and drawable at a U.S. bank). Please send your registrations
to:

Thomas A. Lundin
16267 Hudson Avenue
Lakeville, MN 55044

The registration fee for PARADUMP on network file servers is a $50 flat
charge for up to 20 workstations PER SERVER, and a $100 flat charge for
unlimited (over 20) workstations PER SERVER.

I welcome suggestions and comments regarding PARADUMP.EXE. The suggestions
of registered users will always be considered first. Please respect the
tenets of shareware and register if you intend to use the program beyond
the trial period. It is my policy to not add features to the program on the
promise of registration, so if you are not a registered user, please do not
ask me to change the program to suit your needs. Program bugs are a
different story. I will investigate reported bugs from any user and will
attempt to fix those within my control.

















DISCLAIMER.

This program and its associated documentation are provided AS IS, without
any express or implied warranty. The program is not warranted as to
suitability or fitness for any particular purpose. The author and/or
distributor of this program shall not be held liable for any perceived or
real damages emanating from the use or misuse of this program. The user of
this program understands that operation of this program is undertaken at
the user's own risk.

INTRODUCTION.

     The impetus for writing PARADUMP came out of my frustration at trying
     to export a fixed-length ASCII file from a Paradox 3.5 data table. The
     only method prescribed by Borland was to create a Paradox report
     specification and output the report to disk. So I tried that, and two
     problems became immediately apparent: 1) outputting from a report was
     tediously S-L-O-W, and 2) the last field of a fixed-length record
     wasn't padded to its full field width. This meant that I had to put a
     dummy field at the end of each record to ensure that the last Paradox
     field would be padded out. All of this rigmarole for each table
     (creating a report specification, placing a dummy field, outputting to
     disk) was too much for me to bear, especially when compounded by the
     exorbitantly slow output times. It was actually much faster to use the
     ASCII Delimited Export command sequence in the Tools menu, and to run
     the exported file through a file filter that padded the variable-
     length ASCII fields back to a fixed-length form, but this wasn't
     exactly an elegant long-term solution. The other option I was offered
     was to purchase the Paradox Database Engine for $99, which seemed like
     overkill for what should have been an atomic Paradox operation in the
     first place, and besides, I've seen programs written with the Engine,
     and they seem incredibly bloated for what they do. Nobody at Borland
     wanted to provide me with any hints on the Paradox table structure (as
     if that information was somehow Restricted For Reasons Of National
     Security), so I spent a couple of weeks reverse-engineering it and
     writing this program in my spare time.

     PARADUMP does exactly what I wanted it to do: reads a Paradox table
     and creates a fixed-length ASCII file from it, in one step. The
     performance of PARADUMP is roughly the same as the ASCII export
     command in Paradox, which I find quite acceptable, and in any case
     infinitely better than Report. A record layout for the converted ASCII
     file is generated in a file named PARADUMP.STR. (A record layout is
     critical if you expect someone else to import the fixed-length data
     into another program.)

     Once the code base was complete, it was a simple matter to extend the
     conversion process to allow export into several other transfer
     formats. This facility should allow Paradox files to be exported for
     use with most other word processing and database programs.







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USING THE PROGRAM.

     The program is command-line driven. The form of the command line is:

     paradump PDOXTBL.DB OUTPUTFILE.EXT [Pn[,n,n...]] [On] [Dn]

     where:

     PDOXTBL.DB is the name of the Paradox file to be exported.

     OUTPUTFILE.EXT is the name to give the exported file.

     Pn... is an optional format for specifying the number of decimal
     places to show in NUMERIC fields. The 'n' represents a numeric value.
     More on this later.

     On is an optional switch for specifying the type of output file to
     create. The 'n' represents a numeric value. More on this later.

     Dn is an optional switch for specifying the number of digits a year
     will occupy. The 'n' represents a numeric value. More on this later.

     The default action (where none of the optional switches is selected)
     is as follows:

          The exported file is a fixed-length ASCII text file. Fields are
     padded where necessary to full width and records are terminated with a
     carriage return/line feed.
          Alpha fields are padded with spaces to full width, left aligned.
          Numeric fields are output in a 17-character text field, right
     aligned. 15 significant digits are expressed. Decimal alignment does
     not occur; as many decimal places as are needed will be output in the
     field, and this may vary from record to record.
          Dates are output as alphanumeric fields in the form MM/DD/YYYY,
     (10 characters).
          Short fields are output to 6 digits, right aligned.
          Dollar fields are output in a 17-character text field, right
     aligned, including two decimal places. 15 significant digits are
     expressed.

     PARADUMP does not recognize primary or secondary indexes. The data
     records are exported in physical (unindexed) order.

     When a Paradox table is exported using PARADUMP, an ASCII file with
     the same name as your output file but with an extension of .STR is
     created (so don't use an extension of .STR in your output filename).
     This file contains a listing of the exported table structure. The
     listing includes the field name, the type of field being exported, and
     the width of the field (if a variable-length output option is
     selected, the field width indicates the maximum number of characters
     allowed in the field). Numeric and dollar fields are always 17
     characters wide, but numeric fields can have a variable number of
     digits after the decimal point. The number of decimal places is shown
     in parentheses following the field width. A decimal place value of -1



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     means that the decimal point floats (that is, it appears in whatever
     position is natural for the numeric value stored in the field). You
     can specify a fixed number of decimal places with the P option,
     explained below.

ALTERNATE OUTPUT OPTIONS.

     1. CHANGING THE OUTPUT FILE TYPE (the O option).

        PARADUMP has the ability to output to several other file types by
        setting the O option (letter Oh, not numeral Zero). The following
        options are available:

        O1 - comma/quote-delimited ASCII. Fields are output as variable-
        length text. Each field is surrounded by quote marks, fields are
        separated from one another by a comma. Records are terminated by a
        carriage return/line feed.

        O2 - tab-delimited ASCII. Fields are output as variable-length
        text. Fields are separated from one another by a tab character
        (ASCII 9). Records are terminated by a carriage return/line feed.

        O3 - WordPerfect 5.1 secondary merge. Fields are output as
        variable-length text. Fields are separated from one another by a
        control-R (ASCII 18) and a carriage return/line feed. Records are
        terminated by a control-E (ASCII 5) and a carriage return/line
        feed.

        O4 - comma-delimited ASCII. This is the same as option O1, except
        numeric and dollar fields are not surrounded by quote marks, so
        they can be distinguished from text fields. This format is used
        largely for importing into Lotus 1-2-3 or other spreadsheet
        programs.

     2. CHANGING THE DATE FORMAT (the D option).

        Dates in PARADUMP are output as text strings in MM/DD/YYYY format
        by default. You can output dates as MM/DD/YY by setting the D
        option to D2. Since a 2-digit year can't differentiate between
        centuries, you'd want to be sure that all of your dates fall within
        the same century if you choose D2.

     3. SPECIFYING DECIMAL PLACES (the P option).

        Numeric fields by default are output with a floating decimal point
        within a 17-character text field, right aligned (15 significant
        digits are expressed); this means that whole numbers will be output
        with no decimal point at all, and fractional numbers will be output
        to as many decimal places as required. There are instances,
        however, when it is desirable to align the decimal points in a
        field; this requires a fixed number of decimal places to be output.
        The P option allows you to set the number of decimal places for
        each numeric field, in a range from 0 to 7, or specify a floating
        decimal point.



                                           PARADUMP.DOC REV. 7/18/92 PAGE 4









        The format of the P option is:

        Pn,n,n,n,n,n...

        where each 'n' is a number representing the number of decimal
        places to carry in the field. If you use the P option, you must
        specify a value (even if it is a BLANK value) for each and every
        field in the table. If your table contains 10 fields (even if some
        of them are Alpha fields), you must have 10 values in the P option.
        Of course, it is meaningless to assign a decimal place value for an
        Alpha field, but a comma must be used as a field placeholder
        anyway.

        For instance, assume that your table contains five fields of the
        following types: Alpha, Numeric, Numeric, Alpha, Dollar. Let's say
        you wanted the first numeric field to be output to 3 decimal
        places, and the second numeric field to be output to 0 decimal
        places. The P option would look like this:

        P,3,0,,

        The first value is a blank placeholder for the Alpha field, the
        second value is a 3, the third value is a 0, the fourth value is a
        blank placeholder, and the fifth value is a blank placeholder. You
        could also enter any number instead of a blank placeholder; a
        decimal place value will be ignored for non-numeric fields. For
        instance, this P option line:

        P8,3,0,1,1

        would have the same effect as the previous one, since only the
        second and third fields in the Paradox table are Numeric fields.
        (Remember that Dollar fields are always output to two decimal
        places.)

        A value of -1 is used to indicate a floating decimal point (which
        is the default). Thus, you can mix fixed-place decimals with
        floating-place decimals in the same record.

        IMPORTANT NOTE!
        The P option has a special characteristic that affects all numeric
        fields: THE LAST SPECIFIED VALUE IN THE P OPTION WILL AFFECT ALL
        SUBSEQUENT NUMERIC FIELDS. For instance, if you had a P option that
        looked like this:

        P4

        ...every numeric field in the table would be output to four decimal
        places. As another example, assume you have a Paradox table that
        has fields of the following types: Alpha, Alpha, Numeric, Date,
        Numeric, Numeric, Numeric, Numeric, Numeric. If you had a P option
        that looked like this:




                                           PARADUMP.DOC REV. 7/18/92 PAGE 5








        P,,2,,3

        ...the first Numeric field would be output to two decimal places,
        and the second and all subsequent Numeric fields would be output to
        three decimal places. If we change the P option to this:

        P,,2,,3,-1

        ...the first and second Numeric fields will be output to two and
        three decimal places, respectively, and the third and subsequent
        numeric fields will be output with a floating decimal point.

        Try experimenting with the P option. Play around with different P
        values to get a good idea of how the P option affects your output.











































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               Thomas A. Lundin
               16267 Hudson Avenue
               Lakeville, MN 55044

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                                           PARADUMP.DOC REV. 7/18/92 PAGE 7