How are databases typically implemented in SCO Unix versions of Business Basic?

Question

We have an older reservation application written in BASIC implemented on an SCO Open Server Unix box. It is Release 5 from 2004 (version info from uname -a is "SCO_SV churchil 3.2 5.0.7 i386").

The reservation application is written in BASIC, which I am assuming is Business BASIC. I don't know how to get version info on what flavour of BASIC it is.

What I am particularly interested in is retrieving the data from this system into a format (CSV, Text) that I can use to do ad hoc reporting on. I don't know what schemes would have typically been used when this system was written. I certainly am not holding my breath about this being SQL. Could there be an ODBC driver for this? The system is fairly old, maybe late 1980s even.

So here is my question: How would a BASIC developer working in Unix in the 1980s typically implement the data storing part of a database system?

Answer 1

This is dark ages for me :-) At my previous company we've migrated from Business Basic (BBX when I recall correctly) to Oracle. Data storage was relational, but with lots of duplication of fields.

A quick google for BBX learned me that there might be an ODBC driver for PRO/5 data files, see wikipedia.

Answer 2

I have been working with a Business BASIC application for the last 17 years, it used to run over IBM AIX, then it was ported to SCO OpenServer 5, our flavor of Business BASIC is PRO/5 still supported by http://www.basis.com, they provide several tools to handle their Multikeyed Files in a sort of Relational Database fashion http://basis.com/database-management, PRO/5 DataServer is the tool designed to work with BBx, and they are pushing a special Java-Based development tool which will allow to use ODBC/JDBC.

I have to write routines to extract data from our current application to csv files, then upload this files into actual DBMS to do reporting.

Answer 3

The last db project I ported from that era of SCO used sleepycat version of berkley_db (<1.8 I believe, but newer versions should be able to work with it.) But you'd have to know the data-structures. There is a perl based berkley db data browser I have seen, but it didn't work on all my berkley db files, especially not the multi-dimensional ones.