I'm having a problem opening a DBF file - I need to open it, read everything and process it. I tried several solutions (ODBC/OLEDB), several connection string, but nothing worked so far.
The problem is, when I execute the SQL command to get everything from the file, nothing gets returned - no rows. What's even more odd, the content of the DBF file being opened get deleted.
See the code I have:
public override bool OpenFile(string fileName, string subFileName = "") { OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" + Path.GetDirectoryName(fileName) + ";Extended Properties=dBASE IV;User ID=;Password=;"); try { if (con.State == ConnectionState.Closed) { con.Open(); } OleDbDataAdapter da = new OleDbDataAdapter("select * from " + Path.GetFileName(fileName), con); DataSet ds = new DataSet(); da.Fill(ds); con.Close(); int i = ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count; return true; } catch { return false; } }
I debugged the code and watched the file being opend in Windows Explorer. When it reached this line:
da.Fill(ds);
the size of the file dropped to only a few Bytes (from hundreds of kB).
My next thought was to make the DBF file read only. That however cause an "unexpected exception from an external driver".
So my question is - what the heck? I'm sure the file is not corrupt, it is a direct export from some DB. (No, I do not have access to that DB). I can also open that file in MS Office no problem.
I cannot share the DBF file - it contains confidential data.