I am getting an invaild FPT error, but the file is there

Question

Im getting this error when running an SSIS project that moves all of our files from FoxPro into SSMS Dbs. The corresponding DBF file opens fine on FoxPro and the memo field which is the FPT file to knowledge works fine too, So I don't what the solution is, I tried making a little changes to the memos to see if that would update the file but that didnt work. I tired re indexing the DBF but no luck there either. How can i generate a new FPT file so I can run this project. How could it be invalid. There is no support online for this.

Answer 1

You are using a third party .NET tool (RatSql.DbfReader). Judging from the exception message this tool was written in a .NET language. It's not a Microsoft product and not part of Visual FoxPro.

DBF files are a family of formats that are similar but have subtle differences. Many tools that claim to support DBF files, will only support DBF files created by certain products, such as VFP 6, FP 2.6, dBase or Clipper.

The options I see for you:

1. Get in contact with the vendor and make sure that Visual FoxPro tables are supported by their product. They might have an update or can suggest alternative solutions.

If this is an in-house developed product you need to get into touch with the original developers.

2. Since you have Visual FoxPro, you can convert the file to an older version using the following commands:

   USE table

   COPY TO newTable TYPE FOX2X

replace table with the path and name of the DBF file, and newTable with the path and name of a new file. Then use the new file for your import. There's no guarantee this works, but the old FoxPro 2.x format is more likely to be supported by third party libraries.

If this is a repeated process, you can compile these commands into an EXE file and incorporate calling the EXE into your import process.

3. Replace the .NET component with the Visual FoxPro ODBC driver or OLEDB provider. The ODBC driver does not support features introduced after VFP 6, but should work in most cases. Both are only available as 32-bit drivers which might require you to use 32-bit tools to connect to the DBF file.

4. It might actually be a problem with one ore more records where the pointer to the memo field is wrong. You can find this with Visual FoxPro. Open the DBF file in Visual FoxPro and then open a Browse window. You can do this interactively in the menu or by executing USE and BROWSE commands.

Then double click the column saying "memo" or "Memo". If there are multiple columns, you need to repeat the following step for every column. Now click on the BROWSE window's title bar and hold down the down arrow key. Visual FoxPro should begin scrolling through the table and displaying every record. If there is an error in the memo field, you will get an error message.

Alternatively you can write a FoxPro program that uses a SCAN...ENDSCAN loop and accesses every memo field with =memofieldname if there are too many rows in the table to do this interactively.