Mike, I totally forgot that MS Works was out there. Haven't used that one in about 6 or 7 years. Honestly, your best bet is to convert to .csv or some delimited .txt file. Once that is done, all your rows/columns will be "nice and neat" . Once that is done, (and since your client doesn't have ACCESS, try MYSQL or POSTGRESQL(they are open source). They can handle A LOT OF DATA, so however big your orginal DB is, you can import it to one of these more than capable OS freebie Databases.
Good luck Michael B. Trausch wrote: > I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this. Someone I > know is trying to move away from Microsoft Works, and I am trying to > look into a solution that would convert their data in a lossless fashion > to a more modern format. The database has more than 65K rows, so > converting it to be an Excel spreadsheet, would, AFAIK, not be an option. > > It would seem that MS Works can export the database as a DBF format > database, though I have not tried it. Before I get started, I was > wondering if anyone has been through this problem in the past and used > Python to solve the problem. Knowing nearly nothing about the DBase > family of application software, and database formats, I find myself > feeling like the information out there is, frankly, a bit overwhelming. > > Would the recipe specified in the "dbf to csv" thread be useful here for > a file in DBase IV format? It of course uses the same extension, but I > am not sure if the file semantics are at all similar. The idea at the > end would be to probably create a database on an small SQL server (like > MySQL) and let the person access their data using ODBC on their Windows > workstation so that they can create form letters and the like. They do > not have access to MS Office's Access product, nor do they wish to use > OOo Base (and I can't say that I blame them -- it seems to crash far too > often to be considered reliable stuff). > > -- Mike -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
