[RndTbl] Business Basic BBx Data Extraction

[Dan Keizer]

Wow -- there's a name I haven't heard in a while :-)  (except for recently
when RIM tried to use their trademark BBx) :-)

During my days in Calgary (late 80's to early 90's) I worked for a
consulting company -- one of those the company got involved in doing some
custom BB conversions.  I saw the scripts/programs etc, but that was not
the project that I worked on, so no hands on experience.

Most likely a form a BTree is used for indexing.

You have source code for the applications that are/were in use?  Or are
they distributed in a compiled format?
BASIS would have docs to review if you want to code it out:
http://documentation.basis.com/BASISHelp/WebHelp/index.htm


Dan.

On 20 June 2012 13:36, Michael Sierks <msierks at gwn.ca> wrote:

>  Hello All,
>
> I have an issue with some software that is well before my time and was
> hoping someone from the muug group would be of assistance. I have been
> tasked with extracting data from the following program.
>
> Assyst Practice Managment (GENIE) Software
> V8.8.6 an Emergis Inc. Product(STX.EME)
>
> This program itself is running on an old AIX 5.1 server and has been
> written in BBx Pro5, a language I didn't even know existed. This language
> appears to be an extension of Basic and is know as Business Basic. Written
> by this company.
>
> http://www.basis.com/.
>
> Now the trouble is this program has no built in way of dumping/extracting
> the data. It isn't using Pro/5's built in data storage engine so I cannot
> simply use ODBC to pull the data out. We have been informed it is storing
> all its data in a flat file. And the best way to retrieve the data is by
> reading backups from the tape drive, which we have done so. The data files
> retrieved mostly end in the ".REC" and ".SUB" file extensions and appear to
> contain some patient info. But the largest file that seems to contain most
> data begins with the text "<<bbx>>" and is definetely not stored as
> flatfile.
>
> Does anyone have experience with this BBx language or does anybody have
> any ideas for extracting the data ? I ask because the company that has
> written this practice management software has no interest in assisting with
> exporting the data. Any suggestions are appreciated.
>
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>
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