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Java Forum / First Aid / April 2005Converting record stores (Palm) to ASCII
Hi all, Has anybody here dealt with the problem of converting PDA record stores (Palm .PDB files) into meaningful ASCII-format files? I have a MIDlet running on a Palm PDA that uses a DataOutputStream on top of a ByteArrayOutputStream to write data (longs and ints) into a RecordStore. The thing I'm trying to accomplish is extracting the long and int variables from a handheld database (a .PBD file) after it has been transferred to tabletop PC by the PDA's synchronization process. I first read the bytes of the .PBD file into a byte[] variable using a FileInputStream. From this array of bytes, I try to extract the variables using a ByteArrayInputStream and an associated DataInputStream. The variables are then converted into Strings using Long.toSring() and Integer.toString() and written into an ASCII file separated by tabulators. Instead of the actual values of the variables, the data extracted from the .PDB file is a series of meaningless, very large numbers. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong here?  Signature-Aki "Sus" Laukkanen "Älä multa kysy tai mä vastaan!" "Don't ask me or I'll answer!" Aki "Sus" Laukkanen wrote: > Hi all, > [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > the .PDB file is a series of meaningless, very large numbers. > Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong here? For the information of anyone facing the same problem in the future: Not only does the .PBD file have a constant length database header (in my case [Palm Tungsten E, PalmOS 5.2.1] 104 bytes), it also has n amount of record headers following the database headers [where n is the amount of records in the database]. In the aforementioned case, these were 8 bytes long. The best method to find out how many bytes to skip proved to be experimenting with an incrementing amount of skipped bytes from the start of file and printing out this amount every time the data turned out to be valid. (The process had to be repeated a few times on varied lengths of records to determine the length of the record header, of course.) Damn I hate PDA manufacturers. Signature-Aki "Sus" Laukkanen "Älä multa kysy tai mä vastaan!" "Don't ask me or I'll answer!" Aki "Sus" Laukkanen wrote: > Hi all, > > Has anybody here dealt with the problem of converting PDA record stores > (Palm .PDB files) into meaningful ASCII-format files? http://www.righto.com/pilot/pdb.html SignatureJosef Garvi "Reversing desertification through drought tolerant trees" http://www.eden-foundation.org/ new income - better environment - more food - less poverty > Aki "Sus" Laukkanen wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > http://www.righto.com/pilot/pdb.html Your post came just a bit too late, I already did it the hard way. :-> Signature-Aki "Sus" Laukkanen "Älä multa kysy tai mä vastaan!" "Don't ask me or I'll answer!" Aki "Sus" Laukkanen wrote: > Your post came just a bit too late, I already did it the hard way. :-> You're a patient man!! ;-) SignatureJosef Garvi "Reversing desertification through drought tolerant trees" http://www.eden-foundation.org/ new income - better environment - more food - less poverty > Aki "Sus" Laukkanen wrote: > >> Your post came just a bit too late, I already did it the hard way. :-> > > You're a patient man!! ;-) Nah, just too stupid to give up in any reasonable amount of time >-) Signature-Aki "Sus" Laukkanen "Älä multa kysy tai mä vastaan!" "Don't ask me or I'll answer!" Aki "Sus" Laukkanen wrote: >> Aki "Sus" Laukkanen wrote: >> [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Nah, just too stupid to give up in any reasonable amount of time >-) I struggled with the same problem some years ago, but wanted to do it from Delphi. In the end, I succeeded by using a small exe file, "par", that was very powerful in decomposing and recomposing pdb files. But a source code solution would have been nicer. Another way of doing it in Java is to create a conduit. Haven't tried this, but it should integrate a little bit nicer than letting the user sync first and then select the synced file. A tricky issue when working with the pdb files manually is that Palm Desktop can have multiple users. If so, it's hard to tell what folder the PDB files will be in, or when pushing them to the palm, which one they should be installed into. Unfortunately, the Java Conduit API does not seem to implement a method for retrieving a list of all palm users on the local computer. A guy named Ralph Curtis at Gabriel Software (http://www.gabrielsoftware.com/) wrote some code that does this through JNI by interfacing the C conduit API instead. SignatureJosef Garvi "Reversing desertification through drought tolerant trees" http://www.eden-foundation.org/ new income - better environment - more food - less poverty Free MagazinesGet these publications absolutely FREE for up to 12 months. There are no hidden fees and no obligation. Simply choose a title, complete the application form and submit it. Read more ...
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