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FoxPro to MySQL Database Migration

FoxPro to MySQL Database Migration
November 1, 2022 Tom Clark

When compared to migration between other DBMSs, moving FoxPro databases to a MySQL server is a simple operation. FoxPro isn’t as complicated as other database management systems since it lacks advanced features like stored procedures, triggers, and views. What this means is that FoxPro databases are only utilized as storage, but the actual logic for working with data is contained inside the program itself (s). FoxPro to MySQL database transfer requires just schemas, data, and indexes due to this aspect of the source database.

Transferring data from FoxPro to MySQL server might be challenging. The most common problems someone may face are:

  • Disparate data formats. FoxPro’s Logical data type may take on the values True (represented by the symbol ‘T’) or False (represented by the symbol ‘F’). Similar to TINYINT (1), BOOLEAN or BOOL in MySQL may take on one of two values, 1 for True and 0 for False. Semantic equivalence dictates that ‘T’ should be mapped to 1 and ‘F’ should be mapped to 0. Still, there are circumstances when the “as is” version of the data must be kept intact. It is recommended that ENUM(‘T’,’F’) be used as the type mapping in these cases.
  • Character encodings may vary. DBF files’ headers typically include encoding information, however this data is frequently missing or inaccurate. It is also essential to double-check the converted data with the codepage specified in the DBF file to ensure accurate results. If the converted text contains incorrect symbols, the person responsible for the database migration should switch the tool to a different codepage and try again.

Isn’t it sensible to investigate how various methods of migrating from FoxPro to MySQL handle the aforementioned obstacles at this point? In order to import DBF files into MySQL, the simplest solution is to first export the DBF files to Comma Separated Values format. The free program dbf2csv may be downloaded from SourceForge.net and used to convert DBF files to CSV. Import CSV files into preexisting MySQL tables using the “LOAD DATA INFILE” query.:

  1. place the CSV file(s) in the data folder of the target MySQL database, since MySQL will only permit loading data from a CSV file that is located in the data folder (for security reasons).
  2. Run the following code

LOAD DATA INFILE ‘student.csv’ INTO TABLE mydatabase.student

FIELDS TERMINATED BY ‘,’ ENCLOSED BY ‘”‘

LINES TERMINATED BY ‘\r\n’ IGNORE 1 LINES;

While this method may help with one of the problems, it does nothing to address the other, and further post-processing is required to remedy the problem.

DBF files may be converted directly into SQL scripts that construct tables and populate them with data, skipping over intermediate processes like a CSV file, using the dbf2sql.php script, which can be found at https://github.com/xtranophilist/dbf2sql. It does not intelligently tackle potential difficulties with migrating from FoxPro to MySQL, however, since it does not let configuring mapping of FoxPro logic type and specifying user-defined encoding.

FoxPro to MySQL by Intelligent Converters is a commercial program that allows you to tailor every aspect of the conversion process, from the encoding to be utilized to the logic value processing method. The manual labor involved in the migrating process may be avoided because to this function’s elimination of the middle phases. In addition, the tool has the capability to either directly migrate the FoxPro database to the MySQL server or to export the data into a local MySQL script file with SQL instructions to build tables and populate the data. If the intended MySQL server doesn’t support remote connections, then you should use the second method.