DBase III

This article describes how to export data out of a dBase III Table File (*.dbf).

Opening the data with Libre Office
It is possible to import *.dbf files into Libre Office (or Open Office) Calc or Base: http://help.libreoffice.org/Calc/Importing_and_Exporting_dBASE_Files.

Libre Office will try to recognize the character encoding of the data and preselect this option in the import window. Once a file imported, it can be saved in/exported to a variety of different formats.

Importing the data directly into a mySQL database
Alternatively the data can directly be imported into a running mySQL database using the linux program. Importing the data directly however could cause some problems with the character encoding for non ASCII characters.

If the mysql server is already running, the following commands will import the data: user@linux:~$ mysql -u root -p mysql> create database database_name; mysql> exit user@linux:~$ sudo apt-get install dbf2mysql user@linux:~$ dbf2mysql -vvv -c -f -d database_name -U root -P password DATA_FILE.DBF

The data can then be exported using user@linux:~$ mysqldump -u root -p database_name > data_export.sql

Additional Weblinks

 * Wikipedia article about dBase
 * dBase III entry in PRONOM
 * dBase entry at digitalpreservation.gov