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I have inherited a program called Magic and is version 8.3. We would like to export the data but I am not sure how to do this. All the files are in .dat format and appears to need Btrieve. I did contact the Magic company and they say it would be over $5k to do. I can't believe there isn't an easier way but maybe this is true.

Magic activity console

So above is something I found and can see when people are using the tool. I can't find anything to allow me to query or look at the data in a formatted way.

End goal is to get data out of this and put into a sql server.

Anyone have any ideas how I can export this?

lleemon
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  • if you open one of the .DAT files with a text editor can you see the data or is it all encoded? – RyDog Apr 01 '22 at 21:15
  • The DAT files are Btrieve files. They have a specific binary format and while some data (strings) might be readable in a text editor, most (any other binary data like integers or other numbers) won't be readable. – mirtheil Apr 02 '22 at 15:09
  • Here is the top of one of my files [link](http://www.lleemon.com/img/20220406_Magic-Techsche.dat_top.png) @RyDog – lleemon Apr 06 '22 at 14:59

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The Magic environment used to have a method for creating the DDFs. I think it is called "DDF Make." Once you have the DDFs, you will still need a Btrieve / Pervasive / Actian engine to read the files. If you know the exact record structure, you might be able to create the DDFs (and table entries) manually through SQL or a DDF Builder tool.

mirtheil
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