I am trying to convert Revelation G2B files to DOS using Porter utility. It doesn't work for multivalued fields in records. For example, I have no problem with fields containing name, address, etc of our members. But the field with membership codes or phone numbers(several entries in one field)come out empty. Does anybody have any suggestions for me? I am not a programmer, just a user, so please be more specific. Thanks.

Sophie K.

Do you have enough savvy to create symbolics in the dictionary?

The simplest way would be to create symbolics that do a MV extract on each field (e.g. @ANS=@RECORD (phone.1), @ANS=@RECORD (phone.2) etc) and use the symbolics in the export (phone.1, phone.2).

Thanks a lot, Warren

I will try that.

No problem.

Just remember this is the quickest/easiest way to do this, not necessarily the most elegant or efficient way. The main drawback is it gets quite tedious if there are more than 3 values per field and Associated MVs can get out of hand.

I have a field with as much as 15-20 values in it. Do you have any other suggestions? If it is too complicated, I guess I'll find somebody to help me understand your advice. Thanks.

I guess I need to know what you are going to do with the data. Is it going to be exported into another database, a spreadsheet or a word processor? From there we can work out which format would be best to write it out (i.e. normalized to multiple records or to multiple fields as outlined previously).

We have a general purpose 2-way RevG to DOS converter where you specify the format of the DOS file. If you are interested email me at data@znet.com

We need the data in a spreadsheet (Excel) or Access.

Well, our converter writes to an ASCII file of your definition. You would then have to import the data into Excel or Access using their import capability. One advantage of the converter is once you have an acceptable template, it can be reused and it will work in both directions.

BUT…since EXCEL is an acceptable format for you. why not just write a TCL report of the desired data to a file and then open the file in EXCEL as a TEXT file. Excell will attempt to automatically parse the text from the report across the columns for you but you will probably have to do some parsing manually using the Text-to-Columns option in the Excel Data menu.

Good Luck

Of course, in this suggestion I am assuming your dictionary items of these multi-valued fields exist and are properly defined to display the multi-values in a TCL report.

Tom

It is going to be transferred into a spreadsheet (Excel) for now. Later on it will be imported into another database, but first, I need it in the spreadsheet.

Tom's suggestion is good. You can redirect an RList report to disk and import it as fixed columns in Excel.

Steps from TCL:

SET-LPTR 132,32000 (perhaps wider and longer depending on report)

PDISK drive:\filename.ext

LIST filename fields (P

PDISK PRN

Goto Excel and import drive:\filename.ext

If doesn't do the trick I can send you the skeleton of an export program, but you'd have to edit in all the fields you need and it won't be generalized (meaning you'd have to edit the program every time you need a change). Check out Tom's utility also.

If there are more than one associated Multivalue sets things get more complicated.

Is there an e-mail address I can send the skeleton to?

Thanks a lot Tom and Warren. Your advice seems doable. I'll let you know about the results tomorrow.

I would appreciate the skeleton of the export program anyway. You can email me at prelacy@gis.net (attn: Sophie)

Our program doesn't recognize PDISK command (our version of Revelation is RevG.2B). I checked the list of commands in Help and didn't find anything that seems usable for redirection to a disk

PDISK should be on the Utility disk, you also need $SETPTR. Let me know if you no longer have the disks as I can send you a copy.

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