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 dbf2mysql. 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 mysqldump

user@linux:~$ mysqldump -u root -p database_name > data_export.sql

Specifications

• dBase version 7 file header format

Metaformat files

• Synalysis grammar file (for Hexinator / Synalize It!; more details)

See also

• dBase programming language

Additional Weblinks

• Wikipedia article about dBase
• dBase III entry in PRONOM
• dBase entry at digitalpreservation.gov
• DBF File structure
• dBase File Structure at dBase knowledge base
• Xbase file format description
• Current dBase product
• dBase III file structure
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14008534/opening-and-searching-dbase-iii-dbf-databases-in-python Opening and searching dBase III (DBF) databases in Python