[GLLUG] Interbase/Firebird .GDB file

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 20 Jul 2017 05:27, "DL Neil via GLLUG" <gllug at mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

Do you know how to strip legacy data from an old .GDB (database archive)
file?


Need to access data stored inside an old .GDB database.

That file format was established something like two decades back by Borland
for their Interbase product (now proprietary to Embarcadero?) - remember
the fiasco of Borland's failure to decently migrate their Paradox desktop
DB from DOS to Windows?

Started by installing its F/LOSS fork, Firebird. Unfortunately,
file-formats have been further-developed and no longer reads data from so
many versions ago.

Similar experience with various tools, eg FlameRobin, fbexport.

Hacked .so ...

If you have a .so file, you should also have access to a programming api.
You could write a C program to use the API.
The purpose of databases is for them to be used by programs. So you should
be able to find an api doc somewhere. You can use tools like nm and objdump
to find out what the api function names are. You can then google them to
see if any docs exist describing how to use them.
You have already discovered the schema, so you are almost there.
Dumping the tables to .csv is all you need next.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/gllug/attachments/20170722/d6a49e14/attachment.html>