Welcome

DANS DataPerfect Library is a Java library for reading DataPerfect files. DataPerfect is a file-based database product, originally created by the same company as the well-known WordPerfect word processor.

DANS is a Dutch electronic archiving institute under the auspices of Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and partially funded by the Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research (NWO). It is the initiator of this project. DANS is making this library available under the GNU Public Licence. For more information about DANS, see the DANS website . This library is used by DANS for the MIXED Project .

Features

  • Access to a DataPerfect database through a simple API (a "Database" object)
  • Access to panel's field descriptions and data
  • Record data can be retrieved as String objects, formatted as in DataPerfect
  • Numerically stored data can also be retrieved in the format in which it is stored
  • Sample program: Dp2MySqlExport.java .

Not Supported

We want to be clear about the scope of this project. The following are some features that are currently not supported. Some of them may be supported in the future. If you want to contribute a feature, feel free to send us a patch proposal.

  • writing of DataPerfect file; if you want this feature, you will probably have to fork this project. In the current design we have not made any provisions for this ever being implemented.
  • reading reports.
  • reading user interface information. This could be useful for a program that exports a whole dataperfect application for instance to a PHP/MySQL application (just dreaming here ...)
  • your feature here

News

4 February 2010. Version 1.0.0!

Today we finally took the big step and released version 1.0.0. Apart from performing numerous tests on all the test data we could get hold of, we have added the following features:

  • Initialization code (such as formula's) can be retrieved.
  • The charset to be used to decode string values can now be specified; the default charset is the US DOS code page 437 (a.k.a: "IBM437")
  • Control characters used in text are converted to printable characters.
  • Help text (special mark-up is ignored)

24 December 2009. Beta 03.

Our Christmas present just before the closing of the decade: beta-03 :) The following bugs have been fixed:

  • Mode indicators no longer cause problems.
  • Data links and panel links can now be retrieved on Field objects.
  • UU type fields are no longer rejected.

25 November 2009. Beta 02.

Another beta. We are starting to test with "real-world" data we find on the internet. This revealed some interesting bugs already. We are working to solve some more bugs. The following things have been fixed in this beta:

  • The default date and time order stored in the database are now used.
  • Fixed a bug in the reading of bytes values greater than 127.
  • Print and screen handling instructions in the format pictures no longer cause the format to be rejected.

13 November 2009. Beta 01.

Today we have release the first beta version. All the features we want for version 1.0.0 are present. They just haven't been tested thoroughly. The new functionality includes:

  • Formatters for all data types, i.e. dates, times, numbers are formatted as in DataPerfect
  • Sample program that uses the library. This program takes a DataPerfect database and exports it to a MySQL script, that can subsequently be used to recreate the database in MySQL.
  • Strings from the database can now be decoded using either a caller-specified Charset or by incorporating extended ASCII codes as delimited numbers in the output string.

23 September 2009. Alpha 04.

You can now retrieve the panel name. Also, made the search for "text files" (the storage for variable length fields) case insensitive.

16 September 2009. Alpha 03.

Formatting of dates and times implemented. You can now get the date or time formatted as specified by the field definition by calling Record.getValuesAsString().

6 July 2009. Alpha 02.

Experimental support for reading variable length text fields was added.

2 July 2009. Alpha 01 Released!

Finally we have got around to creating the first alpha release. It supports reading the list of panels, retrieving of each panel some (by far not all) properties and the list of fields. Also it is possible to iterate through the records, although we don't read variabele length text fields yet.

Enough work still cut out for us! But at least you will get an idea about the API and how it is supposed to work. There is no user guide yet. Have a look at the unit tests to find out how to use this library.