From: Sasha Pachev
Date: April 23 1999 5:22pm
Subject: Re: Is there any program for linux to read Master.dat from MsSql 6.5 ?
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Victor Regnér wrote:
> 
> I wonder it there is a program that can read .dat files from a MsSql 6.5
> database.
> 
> Victor
> 

You may write your own if you study them long enough in
a hex editor. However, I believe Microsoft on purpose
comes up with file formats that a hard to deal with to
break other software that tries to interface with it. I
recently tried to fake a Word 97 file. All I need to do
was to change the hyperlink inside the file. I looked at
the hex dump of the orginal file, found the URL in plain
text, replaced it with what it need to be carefully
preserving the offsets, and lo and behold, the file
comes up in Word, the underlined text is what it should
be, but when you click on the link, it points to the old
URL. I did a search through the whole file of plain text
parts of the url, but the only thing I could find was
what I was already chaning. Apparenlty the real location
of the URL is somehow encoded and stored in some magical
table that I have not modified. 

So to make the long story short, the best way to deal
with Microsoft stuff if you still have any is to export
all the data to ASCII, back it up, install Linux, BSD or
some other version of Unix, install MySQL, load your
data, and enjoy life!

-- 
Sasha Pachev
http://www.sashanet.com/ (home)
http://www.direct1.com/ (work)