Tables > Data table formats > dBASE > Paradox to dBASE transfer

Transferring data types from Paradox to dBASE

Transferring data from dBASE to the more capacitive Paradox tables won't raise any issues.
However, transferring data to dBASE may raise a number of issues:

Transfer to dBASE IV and 5

As dBASE tables up to and including level 5 can only accept field names no more than 10 characters long, only capital letters and no spaces or non-ASCII letters, this alone may be a prohibitive limitation.
Also, lack of support for several field/data types may be of concern.

Depending on conversion by the standard Borland BDE*:

Autoinc fields not supported - will be converted to Float.
Bytes not supported and does not convert - conversion attempt raises error.
Memo fields and data converts OK but.
FormattedMemo transfers empty.
Non-Memo and non-Graphic BLOB fields converts to standard Memo fields spoiling content.
Graphic fields and data converts without issues (to TypedBinary).
As the dBASE 5 format has only a limited number of field types, and does not include the field types Time, DateTime and Currency, they will translate to standard Numeric and Character fields.

Transfer to dBASE 7

dBASE level 7 tables has been a huge improvement over the preceding versions, but however not widely (?) used.
First of all, it supports long field names (up to 31 characters) and accepts extended non-ASCII characters and spaces, but no punctuations nor any non-alpha-numeric non Latin characters except underscore (_) - however possibly also depending on the current OEM character set (see PdxEditor About dialog info).
Compound indexes (e.g. LastName, FirstName) still not supported by BDE Local SQL on dBASE (contrast to Paradox).
Also many still in use dBASE applications still have not adapted to the dBASE level 7 tables (from 1997), and MS Access never has supported dBASE 7 tables import/export.

Depending on conversion by the standard Borland BDE*:

Autoinc converts straight - however (as with other database systems) does not accept transferring existing Autoinc values, and the Autoinc values will be re-initialized.
Integer and Float converts to data types Long and Double. Many older dBASE applications will not understand Long and Double.
Bytes is not supported and does not convert - conversion attempt raises error.
Memo fields and data converts OK but.
FormattedMemo transfers empty.
Non-Memo and non-Graphic BLOB fields converts to standard Memo fields spoiling content.
Graphic fields and data converts without issues (to TypedBinary).
After all, if not including Bytes or any of the Binary fields (except Memo), transfer til dBASE 7 shouldn't raise any issues.

*): Some modern applications using dBASE tables have ported their data connectivity from BDE to more capacitive as ODBC/ADO, etc., that may give some new options for data conversion.