On Sep 10, 8:37*am, "ARC" <PCES...@PCESoft.invalidwrote:
...
I know act databases are easy enough to connect to, but I believe you can
change the fields in act, so what do you do if the fields are not the
defaults? Has anyone out there had experience with this? Any tips on writing
a routine to import from Act would be great.
....
ACT! is typically used as a flat file, although there are some
relational capabilities.
I recommend creating a new access database and linking to ACT! via the
dBaseIV drivers and to your target database.
Inspect the ACT! tables and fields and experiment with the import
mappings. You may find that you have to parse some fields and
concatenate others - it all depends on the target application.
I use numbered queries such as q_appe_1_Act_2_Individuals,
q_appe_2_Act_2_transact1, etc. That way I can maintain referential
integrity during the import process. I also have a set of
sequentional delete queries that will empty the target tables. I have
a little code that will loop through the append and delete queries so
that I can populate the target tables and them empty them when I get
it wrong. I get things wrong a lot.
Lather, rinse, repeat on the queries until everything fits. File the
intermediate database so that you can document what went where.
I've done this maybe a dozen times with ACT! databases and, gosh,
maybe a hundred times with everything from Excel to really ugly
Access. I had one Access flat file that had about 70 queries to
transform attributes into transactions.
HTH
Tim Mills-Groninger
