Re: Recorder 6 to Recorder 2002 exports
This is a thread from the Local Record Centre Technical Forum. I copy it here to allow cross-referencing with other topics as it is a serious issue with Version 6.6.8.59:
Has anyone had problems exporting data in NBN zipped format from Recorder 6 to Recorder 2002?
The user of Recorder 2002 reports an ETDB exception:- Unrecognised database format when trying to import the data?
I'll have to wait until tomorrow before I can get hands on with a copy of Recorder 2002 on a standalone machine to try it for myself, so I thought I'd ask to see if there was any history of this problem.
followed later by:
I'm replying to my own post here. Thanks to a couple of replies on the recorder forum (Thanks Charles & David) it seems that exporting in NBN zipped format breaks imports to Recorder 2002!
There is the fall back to the XML NBN format, but one of the reasons the zipped came about (AFAIK) was XML in Recorder 2002 was poor!
At BIS, failure rate with XML nearly 90%, failure rate with zipped format 0%.We have a workflow based on the exchange of NBN Zipped files with our recorders who use Recorder 2000, now I'm *forced* to make changes, test and support this workflow. Not good.
I hope this time the parser in Recorder 6 is more robust. I have just had a quick look at an XML export from Recorder 6 and (as in Recorder 2000) the use of RFT in comments or geographic location fields leaves a malformed XML tag in the resultant file.
I will test this out a bit more. XML has to work 100% in both directions if this is all we have to work with between versions.
and later by me:
I get the following message when using the "Export using filter" and "Export data" facilities.
Exception occurred in application Recorder 6 at 02/05/2006 15:50:29.
Version : 6.6.8.59
Exception path:
EOleException : Syntax error in field definitionThe export seems to proceed well but crashes out after transferring 6 tables. I am able to open the unzipped mdb that has been created in Access 2003 and find ADDRESS, CONTACT_NUMBER, INDIVIDUAL, LOCATION, LOCATION_ADMIN_AREAS & LOCATION_BOUNDARY.
I'm guessing it doesn't like the next one alphabetically (the next ones are NAME, ORGANISATION, REFERENCE, REFERENCE_AUTHOR, SAMPLE etc.)
Dave does raise a pretty serious issue on the backward compatibility issue. We absolutely MUST keep the data flow going between us and our satellites - this is part of our contractual obligations to them. I've never used the XML format as the zipped file always worked wonderfully and you could open it and check that you'd actually exported what you intended (e.g. check that you'd adhered to any demands for contributor confidentiality).
What we need now is a utility to convert Access 200x to Access 97 - it's all here at How to Convert an Access 2000 Database Back to Access 97 - looks like Dave and I are in a race to see how this works out.