Re: Trading databases?

David M. Elins (delins@xionics.com)
Wed, 31 Jul 1996 11:02:27 -0400

Levi Wallach wrote:
>
> As you know from my last message, I'm new to the Omnigo. I've created a
> Phonebook database to add additional fields to make up for the limitations I
> see in the Omnigo's phonebook. It occurs to me that others might have done
> something similar, either for phone numbers or for other types of data. If
> this is so, wouldn't it be possible to trade these databases by simply
> exchanging the .gdb files via the net and then putting them in our \RAM
> directory? If so, why is there no depository of custom databases that
> people have created? I would be happy to provide my database if anyone's
> interested.
>
> Also, though I have created this database, I have yet to enter my data in it
> and am still using the phonebook. I have 60+ names, addresses and numbers
> which I don't feel like sitting down and rekeying into the database! Is
> there any way I can import this into th .gdp file on the PC or something?
> Thanks again for any help!
>
There is a public domain program, gdbio, which will read .gdb files
and produce a comma-separated-value ascii listing of the file.
It will also import such an ascii file into a .gdb file.

I think it will work on the phone book, so I guess you could dump out
that phone book file, massage the ascii file to be in the format
expected by your data base (enter a single record in your db and dump
that out to see what the format should be), then import the ascii file
into your db.

Your idea of a database exchange is terrific. Perhaps someone with a web
page will volunteer to keep a repository. It might be nice to share
other data files also, such as spreasheets.

One caveat about databases. The ogo maintains a 'database of databases'
called master.mdb. If you copy a .gdb file to the ogo but it is not in
master.mdb, you can't get at it (at least I can't) on the ogo. Luckily,
master.mdb is itself a file which can be manipulated by gdbio.

I hope this helps.

David
> ________________________________________________________________
> |Levi Wallach Webmaster, EIS International|
> |lwallach@his.com webmaster-eis@eisint.com|
> |http://www.his.com/~lwallach http://www.eisintl.com|
> \________________________________________________________________/

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  David M. Elins                            voice: (617) 229-7160
  Xionics Document Technologies, Inc.       fax:   (617) 229-4171
  70 Blanchard Rd. Burlington, MA 01803     eMail: delins@xionics.com
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