-1

We are facing issues in opening a .dat file created many years ago. How to open encrypted .dat file created from Btrieve 6.15?

Sundar
  • 655
  • 2
  • 7
  • 13
  • What kind of problem? Are you getting an error? What do you mean by Encrypted? Do you mean it has an Owner Name? – mirtheil Mar 29 '21 at 13:58
  • We don't have any clue on the encryption..we assume its encrypted, but when we open the .dat file, it seems to be simple encoding. It was created some 20-30 years back. But we are trying to restore the old content for references. – Sundar Mar 29 '21 at 14:08
  • How are you opening it? Are you trying to open it in Notepad or something else? Have you used the application used to create the file? What version of the Btrieve engine are you using to open it? – mirtheil Mar 29 '21 at 15:16
  • Attempted to open the .dat file using notepad++, it seems to be just encoded (charset="iso-8859-1" ) .dat file. What is the best option to decode this 2MB .dat file and make it human readable format? – Sundar Mar 30 '21 at 06:10

1 Answers1

3

You need a Btrieve / Pervasive / Actian database engine to open a Btrieve file. You can't open it in Notepad / Notepad ++ / any other editor. Btrieve does not store field metadata so the record returned by the Btrieve engine is just a collection of bytes for the developer to interpret.
There are several possibilities for reading the file:
The best option would be to use the application that created the file to export the data.
If that isn't possible and you have a set of DDFs (FILE.DDF, FIELD.DDF, INDEX.DDF) that accurately describe the data (.DAT) file, you can use ODBC to read the data. You will still need the database engine to read the file.
If you don't have DDFs but know the record layout of the table, you can create DDF files and table reference using CREATE TABLE SQL statements or the DDF Builder (available in recent versions of the PSQL / Zen Database engine. You can also create (or have created) a program that uses the Btrieve API to read the data.
If you don't have the record structure, you might be able to figure it out using a DDF Builder tool.

mirtheil
  • 8,952
  • 1
  • 30
  • 29
  • Thanks mirtheil. We don't have the schema structure, to define DDF. Do you have any sample DDF? – Sundar Apr 01 '21 at 10:17
  • https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10477378/creating-java-connector-for-pervasive – Sundar Apr 01 '21 at 10:52
  • https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10477378/creating-java-connector-for-pervasive – Sundar Apr 01 '21 at 10:52
  • When you create a PSQL Database using the Control Center, empty DDFs will be created. You can then add table definitions to the database. You still need the full Pervasive PSQL / Actian Zen DB engine to use the Control Center / Create DDFs / access the data files. – mirtheil Apr 01 '21 at 11:51