There are still plenty of DOS-based Btrieve applications in use today. Is it possible to move these applications to a current SQL server to take advantage of integration with other applications and powerful data management tools?

The Mertech BTR2SQL driver is a replacement for the Btrieve interface. As noted in the white papers and documentation, the driver is a Windows 32-bit dll (and now supported on Windows 64-bit as well). It would be logical to think that a DOS application could not access this interface; however, many years ago, Pervasive Software (makers of Btrieve) introduced the “DOS Box” support which allows an application written for the DOS interface to enjoy the benefits of the Windows client or workgroup engines.

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Question

What do I input for the “server name” in the login dialog?

Using the “easy connect” naming method

( Information copied from http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28301/network004.htm )

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We now provide 64-bit versions of our BTR2SQL drivers, to allow you to take advantage of the greater address space that comes with working with 64 bits.

The new driver name is ‘w64btr.dll’ in following with Pervasive’s naming convention. Deployment is the same as always. Copy the driver and your license file into your application bin folder.

The main difference in the 64-bit API is that the Btrieve CHUNK descriptor contains a pointer which has now been extended from 4 to 8-bits to take advantage of the full 64-bit address space.

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The Error

When starting the Btr2SQL migration tool, you receive an message in the login dialog saying “Error loading driver!”.

The Cause

The “driver” for the migration tool is one of three dlls: sql_btr.dll, ora_btr.dll or mys_btr.dll found in the bin folder of the installation (usually \Mertech Data Systems\DB Drivers\Btrieve\bin). As noted in the user manual, each of these drivers depends on a client driver to be installed for the target server. For instance, the Microsoft SQL Native Client, Oracle Instant Client, or the MySQL libmysql.dll. There may also be other dependencies such as the C runtime libraries. If any of the dependencies are not found on the system’s PATH, Windows will fail to load the Mertech dll.

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Question

When I first launch our application, a dialog asks me for the database/password.  I clicked the box to save these results and not prompt the next time.

How do I get it to prompt me again?

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