
		------------------------------------
			XBase and DBD::XBase
		------------------------------------

This is the README file for the XBase and DBD::XBase packages.

Module XBase provides access to XBase data files, namely .dbf and
.dbt. It provides "native" Perl interface to the table's content.
Currently only the basic tables (dbf) and memo fields in dbt files
are supported. The goal wasn't to write database engine but simply
a parser. If you are looking for something more powerfull for your
data than just this conversion tool, look (for example) for MySQL or
Postgres.

The man page XBase(3) is included.

DBD::XBase is a database driver for Perl DBI interface. It talks to
XBase module that actually accesses the data. Currently only SELECT
command is supported. This module is not ready yet but any comments
are welcome.

Once more, this is a module to parse and update XBase files, not
a db engine. It is provided in a hope you might find it usefull.
My intent is to support as meny variations of formats as possible, but
I do not have dBase/Fox* and do not plan to have, so send me examples
of your data files if you feel your native XBase engines produce data
incompatible with this module.

Installation: Download the tar.gz, unpack it, change to the DBD-XBase-*
	directory. Then do

	perl Makefile.PL
	make
	make test
	make install

or you can use CPAN module and just type "install XBase". You really
should have 5.004 to run cool.

Problems: If anything goes wrong when installing, please send me output
of you installation messages and of make test TEST_VERBOSE=1. If there
are error when actually running it on your data, please send me the
messages (errstr) and if possible, you data files that cause the
problems.

Available:
	http://www.fi.muni.cz/~adelton/perl/ and from your favorite
	CPAN site.

Copyright: (c) 1997 Jan Pazdziora, adelton@fi.muni.cz. All rights
	reserved. This library is free software; you can redistribute
	it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

