Progress 8.3e recovery

ThndrStorm

New Member
I am trying to resurrect an abandoned database for a product from a company long out of business.

It is a Progress 8.3e database, I have got Progress 8.3e installed, finally running with a .pf file I THINK is valid. I am trying to connect to it with an ODBC driver so I can dump the contents to a SQL Express database for historical queries and such. I am getting a variety of errors. But the main one I believe is that I can't get the primary or even a secondary broker to load -ServerType SQL without getting a "You have not supplied a parameter for argument -e. (1403)). I have found NOTHING online about this parameter. I am very thankful for the Progress Talk and Progress KB as it has been very help as I have been trying to reverse engineer this database. Any thoughts or ideas?
 

Cringer

ProgressTalk.com Moderator
Staff member
Hi there. Please provide the full command you're using to start the secondary broker. Usually that error indicates a casing issue in a parameter, or a parameter it doesn't recognise.

Although - looking further I found this: -ServerType is a database startup parameter introduced in Progress 9.1D

So that won't help...

8.3e is a little before my experience of DBA so I may have to defer to others' expertise.
 

ThndrStorm

New Member
Ah, thank you for that tidbit! So that is a dead-end.

As I dig deeper I have seen that v8.x uses OID, so I am researching that ATM.
 

TomBascom

Curmudgeon
You would probably save yourself a lot of agony if you just dump the data to a text file. You are going to go through endless pain and misery that will almost certainly go nowhere trying to get some sort of SQL connection going.

If you can start a plain old 4gl connection to the db you can almost certainly dump it directly.

Also, your options will be much easier to evaluate if you run "showcfg" and tell us what sorts of licenses you have installed.
 

ThndrStorm

New Member
ANYTHING to make my life easier would be greatly appreciated! LOL

As requested:

Configuration File: C:\DLC\PROGRESS.CFG

Company Name: Company name is here

Product Name: Workgroup Database
Installation Date: Fri Jun 07 12:21:32 2013
User Limit: 25
Expiration Date: None
Serial Number: 002696948
Control Numbers: ***
Version Number: 8.3B
Machine Class: KB
Port Number: 31

Product Name: Client Networking
Installation Date: Fri Jun 07 12:21:32 2013
User Limit: 25
Expiration Date: None
Serial Number: 002696959
Control Numbers: ***
Version Number: 8.3B
Machine Class: KB
Port Number: 31
 
Last edited by a moderator:

TomBascom

Curmudgeon
You should have a "proenv" command in the Progress program group. (That is the command line interface that ensures that your environment is properly setup.)

From the "proenv> " prompt, first cd to wherever the database is installed and start an "mpro" to get to the data admin tools. I am going to pretend that that is c:\db and the database is "sports2000". So:

Code:
proenv> cd /d c:\db
proenv> mpro sports2000 -p dict.p

(Use "mpro" if there is a server running. If there is no server you might be in "single user mode" and you would just use "pro" instead of "mpro".)

You should then be able to navigate to Admin -> Dump Data and Definitions -> Table Contents. That will looks something like:

Code:
Database Schema Admin DataServer Utilities PRO/SQL Tools
                ┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
                │ Dump Data and Definitions ->           │
                │ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
                │ │ Data Definitions (.df file)...             │
                │ │ Table Contents (.d file)...                │
. . .

If you cannot navigate to "table contents" then you might need to try again with "mpro sports2000 -p dict.p -rx" but don't try the -rx option unless you really need to.

"Data Definitions" is the proprietary Progress DDL. It is a text file so you can read it but it is not SQL. But if you need to know what the field definitions are this will help. (You can also generate possibly useful reports from the "Database" menu.)

After you select "Table Contents" you will get a list of tables to select. You can type "all" if you want to dump them all. Or you can start typing a table name to jump to that table.

Select the table or tables that you want and dump them. A file with the tablename and the extension ".d" will be created. This is a space delimited quoted string file. There are no headers. There are a few lines at the end with descriptive data about the output that you might want to delete before you try to import it.
 

ThndrStorm

New Member
Thank you! That got me to a point that I am now needing to dig up some internal information to be able connect. Much appreciated.
 
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