Date   : Thu, 14 May 1992 15:28:20 GMT
From   : mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!ogicse!uwm.edu!linac!uchinews!iitmax!thssno@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Neil R. Ormos)
Subject: Importing external data into DataStar database?

Illinois Tech Model Railroaders (ITMR) has acquired an old Sanyo
SBC-1200 computer.  It runs CP/M.  We seem to have legitimate
copies of DataStar and ReportStar, but the reference manuals (if
any existed) have disappeared.  We do have a couple of
introductory or tutorial manuals. 

We have an existing machine-readable database which is stored in
a flat file format, and we would like to import that data into
DataStar so that we can use that product to maintain the
database.  The introductory manuals were good enough that we were
able to successfully create a new test database and we have had
no difficulty adding or updating records in the test database. 

However, all of our previous attempts to import old data without
retyping it have failed.  We are hoping someone on the net will
help us out with the following. 

1.  DataStar appears to have a feature to allow "batch" entry
    files to be merged with the main database, but it appears to
    require that the "batch" entry file have been created with
    DataStar.  When we experimented with using that feature to merge
    non-DataStar files, DataStar either erased the file or decided
    that there were no records in them. 
    
    Does DataStar have a mechanism for importing data from external
    (i.e. non-DataStar) files? 

2.  We could probably reformat the existing database to fool DataStar
    into treating it as a native DataStar database, but we don't know
    the correct format.

    Is there publically accessible information describing the
    format of the data and index files?  There does not seem to be
    any particular magic to DataStar data files--it looks like
    records are <cr>-delimited and fields are comma-delimited.
    However, I haven't been able to figure out the either the format
    of the index files or the way the index fields are calculated. 
    
Any help would be appreciated.  Perhaps there are other ways to
import the data we haven't thought of.   Please mail responses
to me.

Thanks!

  --neil ormos  wd8bdp  thssno@iitmax.iit.edu