CODEWITHSUNDEEP
databasesybase
Niranjan
Niranjan

Reputation: 21

How to retrive datas from a old sybase .db file

I have a database file with extension .db . When I open it in a text editor ,this is what I see,..

WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994 WATCOM International Corp., Copyright (c) 1987, 1994

..in the begining and some encrypted datas.

After some research I came to know that this was made using Sybase BD.

I tried using Sybase Central to retrieve datas and it throwed me an error message stating that "Unable to start specific DataBase : This file was created by a different version of the software"

So guys,please help me out to retrieve datas from this sybase database file..

Thank you.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3481

Answers (1)

Graeme Perrow
Graeme Perrow

Reputation: 57238

The database was created with Sybase SQL Anywhere. Given the error message, it was probably created with a version prior to v10; the v10 software was changed so that older databases need to be reloaded before they can be used.

If you have a newer version of SQL Anywhere, you can use the dbunload utility to create a new database containing the data from the database you have. You can then use the new database to get the data. The command would be something like:

dbunload -an new.db -c "uid=dba;pwd=sql;dbf=old.db"

Instead of "uid=dba;pwd=sql" you will need to specify a username with DBA authority (dba is the default) and its password (sql is the default). If you don't have a DBA user / password, you are out of luck. You may need to contact Sybase tech support - if you can prove ownership of the file, they may be able to extract the data from the database.

It's also possible that the database is strongly encrypted, in which case you will also need to supply the encryption key (by adding ";dbkey=" to the connection string above). If you don't have the encryption key, you are completely out of luck because the data is completely inaccessible.

Disclaimer: I work for SAP / Sybase in SQL Anywhere engineering.

Upvotes: 2

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