[RndTbl] Business Basic BBx Data Extraction

[Michael Sierks]

Hello All,

I have an issue with some software that is well before my time and was 
hoping someone from the muug group would be of assistance. I have been 
tasked with extracting data from the following program.

Assyst Practice Managment (GENIE) Software
V8.8.6 an Emergis Inc. Product(STX.EME)

This program itself is running on an old AIX 5.1 server and has been 
written in BBx Pro5, a language I didn't even know existed. This 
language appears to be an extension of Basic and is know as Business 
Basic. Written by this company.

http://www.basis.com/.

Now the trouble is this program has no built in way of 
dumping/extracting the data. It isn't using Pro/5's built in data 
storage engine so I cannot simply use ODBC to pull the data out. We have 
been informed it is storing all its data in a flat file. And the best 
way to retrieve the data is by reading backups from the tape drive, 
which we have done so. The data files retrieved mostly end in the ".REC" 
and ".SUB" file extensions and appear to contain some patient info. But 
the largest file that seems to contain most data begins with the text 
"<<bbx>>" and is definetely not stored as flatfile.

Does anyone have experience with this BBx language or does anybody have 
any ideas for extracting the data ? I ask because the company that has 
written this practice management software has no interest in assisting 
with exporting the data. Any suggestions are appreciated.
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