Hi, I’m a hardware developer and repairer and one of my clients has a relatively small (I think) DOS-based Clarion database that they use to track their work in repairs for school laboratory equipment. As a result of this DOS-based requirement they are still stuck on Windows XP and I am trying to move them on. I need someone who will convert their Clarion database to Access (I’m choosing Access because they have an MS Office license and it is readily available to them with no further financial outlay but am open to inexpensive alternatives). Does anyone on this forum do this kind of work and would be willing to quote on the conversion? I am willing to supply a zip file of the database for evaluation under terms of confidentiality.
regards
roman.
Out of curiosity, is the source code available or just the data files?
And related to the database, why not use Maria DB, MySQL or PostgreSQL as no financial burden alternatives?
No idea what I have - I’m guessing it’s the actual source files in the executable directory copied from the hard drive? I don’t know what’s actually in there.
I picked Access because I have experience of dealing with Access databases and so if they want further query screens I can probably do it.
mr.voltaire (at) protonmail.com
I will take a look…
What File Extensions do you see?
E.g. .DAT .K## .TPS .CLA .APP .DCT
Maybe convert to SQLite, then import that where desired.
I copied what I think is the database folder from the hard drive of the PC that I believe it’s running from (it’s a networked configuration). Here’s the listing:
ADDRESS.BAK ADDRESS.RBP ANAL.RBP ANAL2 ANAL2.BAK
ANAL2.RBP ANAL3.BAK ANAL3.RBP ANALYSE.BAK ANALYSE.RBP
ANSI.SYS BASRUN.EXE C.DCT CALENDAR.TXT CHKLIST.MS
CLARION.DMP CLIENTS CLIENTS.DCT CLIENTS.ISM COLLECT.BAK
CONFIG.PRM CONFIG.SYS CONFIG0.TXT CONFIG1.TXT CONFIG11.TXT
CONFIG12.TXT CONFIG2.TXT CONFIG3.TXT CONFIG4.TXT CONFIG5.TXT
CONFIG6.TXT CONFIGUR.TXT Clients.dat DATABASE.MNU DATABASE.MSG
DATAWORK.%%% DBDEF.EXE DBDEF.VDU DBDEFF.VDU DBDEFR.EXE
DBDEFR.VDU DBDICT.EXE DBDICT.VDU DBEDHEAD.VDU DBENQ.EXE
DBENQ.VDU DBENQC.EXE DBENQOS.EXE DBENQS.EXE DBENT.EXE
DBENT.VDU DBFMT.EXE DBFMT.TBL DBFMT.VDU DBKILL.VDU
DBLABEL.EXE DBLABEL.VDU DBREAD.EXE DBREAD.VDU DBSCRED.EXE
DELIVER.BAK DELIVER.RBP DIFLEAD1.TOM DIFLEADS.T00 DIFLEADS.TOM
DebugMy Application.exe EDEXAM.VDU EQMEN.BAK EWNI.BAK
IBMINIT.DAT INSTALL.EXE INSTALL.MSG INSTS.DAT INSTS.ISM
JBCSCH.BAK JBCSCH.RBP JOBCARD JOBCARD.WP JOBCARDS.DAT
JOBCARDS.DCT JOBCARDS.ISM JOBCARDS.RBP JOBS.WP JP1.BAK
LABEL.2 LABEL.BAK LABEL.WP LABEL2.BAK LABEL2.WP
LATECALL LATECALL.BAK LATECALL.RBP LBEL.WP LEADS.DJ4
LEADS.TOM LEADS3.TOM LEADS5.YOM NEWCARDS NEWCARDS.BAK
NEWCARDS.RBP PLANTRIP.003 PLANTRIP.RBP PRINTDEF.DAT PROGRESS.DCT
PTINTER Progres1.exe QTCHASE QTCHASE.BAK QTCHASE.RBP
RBP.000 READY.BAK REPORT.BAK RETRIEVE.EXE RETURN.BAK
RETURN.RBP SERQOTO1.BAK SERVICES SERVICES.DAT SERVICES.DCT
SERVICES.ISM SERVICES.RBP SERVQUOT.BAK SERVQUOT.RBP SERVQUOT.WP
SORTFEED.%%% TERMDEF.DAT TRIP.BAK TRIPS.BAK TRIPS.RBP
UPDATE.BAK UPDATE.RBP VOCAB.DCT VOCAB.RBP VOCAB.VOC
if the old DOS application does everything they want, maybe as an alternative to rewriting it in Access or whatever, try running it under DOSBox (www.dosbox.com) or some other DOS emulator and see if that works for you.
I think DropBox is mainly used these days by people wanting to play old classic DOS games, but perhaps it would work for you.
also see: Export all tables data to CSV, JSON, XML, etc - #15 by FedericoNavarro
There’s a possability that there is some RealBasic in there as well. .RBP might be realbasic and there’s a BASRUN.exe which could be the basic runtime.
There’s a couple of bit in there that look like Clarion (.DAT, .DCT) but not that much.
Either way just getting the data into something like Access will be the easy bit. You then need to recreate the entire program. That might take months.
I’d also go for a DOS environment or virtual machine to run this.
If the information is not confidential, can you can just zip up the .dat files and upload them here? I’m sure someone will have a look and see if it’s possible, maybe even do it for you.
Can someone remind me if only the .dat files are needed, where are the index/key files?
yes perhaps it is not Clarion at all. eg. regarding DAT and DCT see:
It’s been a long time, but my recollection is the key files for Clarion DAT files are labelled .K01, .K02 etc.
I also think it is unlikely to be clarion. Those DBxxx.EXE in particular (defrag, enquire, enquire from operating system, read, dictionary?) point to something completely different, not to mention “normal” clarion extensions are in a minority (.vdu, .wp, .rbp, i.ism, .tom)
I am making some little headway with this. First, a couple of specific answers…
JonW - It thinks it is Clarion as when I run it I get an error screen, at the top of which is “CLARION Version 2.1 Release 2107”
PurpleEdge2214 - Sadly the database contains data that is subject to GDPR and a purchased database of names and addresses that is under license. So I cannot just release it (wish I could and somebody would “just convert it”!)
I have installed DOSBOX and am able to run the database under it. The first time I ran it I got the error:
Program Stop Version 2.1 Release 2107
‘Cannot Share CLIENTS - Error: PATH NOT FOUND’
Press Esc to quit program, Enter to continue
I did a “grep CLIENTS *” on the directory’s files (hosting this on a Mac) and found that the file CLARION.DMP had the following:
CLARION.DMP: 1| 05 FILE S D:\PROG\CLIENTS.DAT
CLARION.DMP: 2| 06 KEY D:\PROG\CLIENTS.K01
CLARION.DMP: 3| 07 KEY D:\PROG\CLIENTS.K02
CLARION.DMP: 4| 08 KEY D:\PROG\CLIENTS.K03
but the program’s directory contained a “Clients.dat” and a “CLIENTS” file but no CLIENTS.DAT. Both of these files (when I opened them to take a look at their content) contained some legible text that I recognised as client data and they appeared very similar in format (but I have no idea what the format is). The directory contains no .Kxx files.
So I renamed “Client.dat” to CLIENT.DAT, renamed the directory with the program in it to “PROG”, mounted it on D: and got the error:
CLARION Version 2.1 Release 2107
D: PROG\CLIENTS. DAT
ERROR CODE:36 INVALID DATA FILE
DOS ERROR :0
So, some progress but still a brick wall.
Thoughts are that maybe file formats are screwed up because I’m running it under a Mac? Or I’m just plain missing something due to my ignorance.
Any ideas or pointers at this stage would be appreciated.
regards
roman
Well Clarion 2107 is definatly clarion.
DOS Files are not case sensitive, so changing the case would not work.
As Jon said a typical Clarion Data file has an extension of .DAT and the key files have an extension of .K01 and a memo file with .MEM. So look for a directory filled with them. It sounds like you have a program directory not the data directory.
note that clarion can work with a number of ISAM file formats including btreive, even back then.
Yeah, it sounds likely that the path to the files is hard coded into the application, so you’ll need the files from d:\Prog\ and you’ll need to create a d:/Prog folder in your test environment.