Want to know the database of a file

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I have many files with the extension *.DAT, I want to retrieve the datas from these files. But I don't know which database the file belongs to.
If i send you one of the file, can you help me ?

Posted 5-Jan-11 6:26am

ANANDHAN steve

Updated 5-Jan-11 6:31am

v2

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Sandeep Mewara 5-Jan-11 12:27pm

Is that directed to someone specific?

ANANDHAN steve 5-Jan-11 12:33pm

No, can anybody help me

Manfred Rudolf Bihy 5-Jan-11 14:49pm

Do you have any idea how old the software is that produced/worked with these files?
Anyhow look at my answer below. Maybe I landed a lucky punch! :-D

Manfred Rudolf Bihy 7-Jan-11 6:06am

Glad if I could help! If you don't mind I would really like to know how you worked it out in the end. Either leave a comment on my answer or leave a message in my member profile forum.
Happy coding!

3 solutions

Solution 2

Don't know if this will help you but most database systems embed a "magic number" or signature in the first few bytes of the file.

Executable files for instance starts with MZ, a legacy from the days of DOS.

Try figuring out if your DAT files starts with a common set of bytes. If they do, you can try serching the net for a database system that use that sequence as its "magic" number.

Take a look at this[^] for a further explaination.

Regards
Espen Harlinn

Posted 5-Jan-11 7:37am

Espen Harlinn

v2

Solution 1

Well, '*.DAT' files are not any database files. They are just a file with extension 'dat'. They do not belong to any database.

Have a look at this article of how to read/write a DAT file using C++[^].

Posted 5-Jan-11 6:41am

Sandeep Mewara

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fjdiewornncalwe 5-Jan-11 12:50pm

Agreed. I have seen many applications over the years where data was simply stored in a .dat file. You cannot assume that it is from any database at all. Since we have nothing better to work on, open it in notepad... maybe it will even be a plain text file.(highly unlikely, though)

ANANDHAN steve 5-Jan-11 12:52pm

I have picked these files from one of the medical software, this software is dealing with patient records and administration, so they can't be just text files. I have used the hex editor to see the contents. I want to migrate this client to our software.

Sandeep Mewara 5-Jan-11 12:55pm

Looks like you totally ignored my answer.
1. They do not belong to any database. Might or might not be able to see content in a notepad (generally you are able to) (Since you were able to open in Hex editor its kind of a text file but not a 'text' file extension.)
2. I already provided an article link that shows how you can read from a DAT file

Try please!

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Manfred Rudolf Bihy · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-05T08:39:00

Hi Steve,

one idea came to mind hearing that about some *.DAT files. Way back in the first half of the 1990's I had to do with a ISAM DB called BTrieve and I'm ~~pretty~~ sure that there were also some *.DAT files involved. I think it had to do with some files containing the "true" data and other files contained the indexes (*.IDX).

Googling turned up this website that has a tool on it called BtSearch that is able to analyze BTrieve DAT files (Caution: Commercial product!):
BtSearch on www.nssdd.com[^]

Maybe you can google some on your own like: BTrieve DAT convert

Modification:
A quote from this site: The Architecture of BTrieve[^]
"The API likewise remained backwards compatible, with only one feature (split files to separate media) being dropped. At one point, Btrieve's former CEO Ron Harris stated that "The version 1.0 API is still supported in version 6.15, and we're going to keep it forever!" (Kyle, pg 11)."

Sounds promising if your files really are BTrieve files that you'll still be able to read them.
End Modification

Best of luck!

Regards,
Manfred