DataPerfect to MySQL conversion

What is the best approach?

[lammert]

One of my clients has a database maintained in DataPerfect with about eight years of information. They finally decided to abandon this system and now this data must be uploaded in a MySQL database.

I have looked around and I haven't found a good conversion tool yet. So I will probably the conversion myself with some home brewn tools. What should be the best approach: trying to reverse engineer the database file with help of the limited file format information I have found, or dump all records in a large TXT file and create a hand full of text conversion scripts (with AWK and alike) to convert the info to .sql files that can be imported in MySQL?

[coopster]

Ugh. How many tables and how many are PRIMARY <--> FOREIGN key related?

[lammert]

The dataperfect database contains only one interesting table with production and performance results of the last eight years.

I am affraid the real challenge comes after this data has been imported in the SQL database as it has to be linked to other data already imported there from other sources. Linking the appropriate fields to fields in other tables and setting up proper foreign keys to remain data integrity in the future will probably take the most time. We are talking of nearly 15000 records, so cross linking them by hand may take some time :)

[8kobe]

A suggestion, can you convert this into another type of database first. Then from that database to mysql? This may be faster then writing a tool that you will use 1 time it sounds like. If it is only 1 table it seems like it will be the best way of doing it.

[lammert]

I have looked around, but there seems to be not one conversion tool around, not even to a format like dBase DBF files. I am going to convert the database this week and I will first try to dump the data to an ASCII file and then process it further.