Hello all

I have a set of legacy applications that use dbaseIII+, containing English, as well as data in ISCII format. These have to be transferred to SQL Server. I am working on an XP with SQL Server 2000 installed

In the DTS' Import/Export wizard, after the data source has been selected as 'Dbase III', the file name containing the data, and user name /password are asked. After giving the file name, if the user name and password are not given, the following error message comes up - "Invalid date setting in the Xbase key of the Windows Registry". If, along with the filename, the user name / password combination is entered (the one used at the time of logging in), then the following error message is thrown - "Cannot start your application. The workgroup information file is missing or opened exclusively by another user.

RegEdit on the key - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\microsoft\jet\4.0\engi nes\Xbase - date showed the data equal to 'MDY'. I changed this to 'MM/DD/YY'. Still no dice.

This same error of "Invalid date setting ..." appears when i try to do an import on the dbase file in Access 2003. Though, in the Access 2003/Import window, upon specifying the file type as 'dbaseIII', all the files are listed properly, indicating that the files as such are being recognized correctly by the system.

What could be the reason for this problem, and how does one correct it

Regards

Sanjay

Sanjay Agrawal wrote:

I've got years of experience with dbase dialects, from dBase II to III+
To Clipper and Foxpro. Sometimes files get corrupted, and I may still be
able to find repair utilities. If you have MS tools, such as Access or
especially Foxpro, which comes with various versions of microsoft's
visual tools, you'll find Foxpro capable of reading older xBase
dialects. You might want to try "removing" the file from it's related
indices, if it's not really a dbase III file but a Clipper, Foxpro or
more recent xBase dialect. Try putting the DBF file in a directory by
itself, and hitting it with MS Access, for example, to see if you can
read it, or some other program which can read a DBF.

If you have Crystal reports, for example, which I haven't used much
recently, that has a wide variety of ODBC drivers that can probably read
the files, and with crystal's export capabilities, you could probably
export the data with that alone.

If you ahve additional questions, feel free to contact me, after
cleaning up the trash from my email address.