Create dbase ODBC on Ubuntu 12

Question

first of all, sorry for my English.

i'm, developing with PHP and a dbase db. Usually I do that on a Windows machine but, sometimes, i have to develop on Ubuntu. The problem is, i can't find a way to create a odbc datasource on Ubuntu, with dbase.

So, any tips out there? is this possible or not?

I don't want to take the data directly from the .dbf files, I want to connect to the odbc dsn.

Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

All the way down the bottom of the manpage for xbase the author writes:

How is this DBD::XBase related to DBD::ODBC? DBD::XBase reads the dbf files directly, using the (included) XBase.pm module. So it will run on any platform with reasonable new perl. With DBD::ODBC, you need an ODBC server, or some program, that DBD::ODBC could talk to. Many proprietary software can serve as ODBC source for dbf files, it just doesn't seem to run on Un*x systems.

Since dBase is very much a legacy system, it is unlikely that anyone is going to put much effort in either writing or keeping odbc drivers up to date.

If the complexity of your existing dBase code allows for it, perhaps you could start migrating to some SQL based DBMS. Drivers for anything ranging from Microsoft SQL Server to SQLlite are much easier to find.

If your existing code base or time schedule do not allow for a migration, perhaps connecting through a webservice could open a window to Ubuntu.