NAME

       pgdbf - convert XBase / FoxPro tables to PostgreSQL

SYNOPSIS

       pgdbf [-cCdDeEhqQtTuU] [-m memofile] filename [indexcolumn ...]

DESCRIPTION

       PgDBF  is  a program for converting XBase databases - particularly FoxPro tables with memo
       files - into a format that PostgreSQL can directly import.  It's a compact C project  with
       no  dependencies  other than standard Unix libraries. While the project is relatively tiny
       and simple, it's also heavily optimized via profiling - routine benchmark were many  times
       faster  than with other Open Source programs. In fact, even on slower systems, conversions
       are typically limited by hard drive speed.

   Features
       PgDBF was designed with a few core principles:

              Simplicity.  This code should be understandable by anyone who wants to hack it.

              Robustness.  Every syscall that might possibly fail is checked for success.

              Speed.  PgDBF was born to be the fastest conversion available anywhere.

              Completeness.  It has full support for FoxPro memo files.

              Portability.  PgDBF runs on 32- and 64-bit systems, and both little-endian (eg x86)
              and big-endian (eg PowerPC) architectures.

   Performance
       PgDBF's  speed  is  generally limited by how fast it can read your hard drives.  A striped
       RAID of quick disks can keep PgDBF pretty well  fed  on  a  single-processor  system.  One
       problem  area  is  with  memo  files,  which may become very internally fragmented as memo
       fields are created, deleted, and updated. For best results, consider placing the  DBF  and
       FPT  files  on  a RAM drive so that there's no seek penalty as there is with spinning hard
       drives, or using a filesystem such as ZFS that caches aggressively.

       One particularly fragmented 160MB table with memo fields used to take over  three  minutes
       on  a  FreeBSD UFS2 filesystem. Moving the files to a RAM disk dropped the conversion time
       to around 1.2 seconds.

       A certain test table used during development comprises a 280MB DBF file and a  660MB  memo
       file. PgDBF converts this to a 1.3 million row PostgreSQL table in about 11 seconds, or at
       a rate of almost 120,000 rows per second.

OPTIONS

       -c     Generate a CREATE TABLE statement to make a table with similar datatypes and column
              names as the DBF file. Default.

       -C     Suppress the CREATE TABLE statement.

       -d     Generate  a  DROP TABLE statement before the CREATE TABLE statement. This is useful
              for replacing the contents of a table that already exists in PostgreSQL. Default.

       -D     Suppress the DROP TABLE statement.

       -e     Change the DROP TABLE statement to DROP TABLE IF EXISTS so that newer  versions  of
              PostgreSQL  (8.2+)  will  only  attempt  to drop the table if it's already defined.
              PostgreSQL will return an error when attempting to drop a table that does not exist
              unless IF EXISTS is used. Default.

       -E     Do  not use the IF EXISTS modifier to DROP TABLE for compatibility with versions of
              PostgreSQL older than 8.2.

       -h     Print a help message, then exit.

       -m memofile
              The name of the associated memo file (if necessary).

       -n     Create NUMERIC fields with type NUMERIC. Default.

       -N     Create NUMERIC fields with type TEXT. Use this if rows contain invalid number  data
              in NUMERIC fields (which are essentially CHARACTER fields behind the scenes).

       -p     Show a progress bar during the conversion process.

       -P     Do not show a progress bar. Default.

       -q     Enclose the name of the table in quotation marks in statements like "CREATE TABLE",
              "DROP TABLE", and so on. This is  useful  in  cases  where  the  table  name  is  a
              PostgreSQL reserved word, and almost certainly harmless in all other cases.

       -Q     Do not enclose the name of the table in quotation marks. Default.

       -s encoding
              Set  the encoding used in the input file. When given, output will be converted from
              that encoding to UTF-8. Supported encodings depend on your  version  of  the  iconv
              library. Available only if your copy of PgDBF was compiled with iconv support.

       -t     Wrap the entire script in a transaction. Default.

       -T     Remove  the  wrapper transaction. This is generally not a good idea as it can cause
              the table to appear completely empty to  other  clients  during  the  data  copying
              phase.  If the entire process occurs inside a transaction, the update is atomic and
              other clients will have full access to all data in the table at all times.

       -u     Issue a TRUNCATE TABLE statement to clear the contents of a  table  before  copying
              data into it.

       -U     Suppress the TRUNCATE TABLE statement. Default.

OPTION NOTES

       The  -c  and  -d arguments are incompatible with -u as it's pointless to truncate a newly-
       created table. Specifying -c or -d will disable the TRUNCATE TABLE statement as though  -U
       was  given.  Similarly, using the -u argument will disable the CREATE TABLE and DROP TABLE
       statements as if -C and -D were given.

BUGS

       When multiple incompatible interpretations of a type are available, such  as  the  B  type
       which  can  mean  binary  object  in  dBASE  V  or double-precision float in FoxPro, PgDBF
       currently uses the FoxPro interpretation.

       Most XBase datatypes are supported, but some are not (yet). As of this writing, PgDBF  can
       handle  boolean,  currency,  date,  double-precision  float, float, general (although only
       outputs empty strings; it's unclear how to resolve OLE objects  at  this  time),  integer,
       memo,  numeric,  timestamp,  and varchar fields. If you need other datatypes, send a small
       sample database for testing.

AUTHOR

       Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com>