Question

I’m trying to sync a legacy application (which stores data in VisualFoxpro dbfs) to MySQL or SqlServer 2005. This will allow us to see certain information online. I need this sync at least twice a day.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

I am not aware of any off-the-shelf software to handle this, but it would not be difficult using python, my dbf module, and one of the MySQL packages.

Once you have the script written, add it to the system scheduler to run as often as you need.

Very rough example:

import dbf
import MySQLdb

legacy_table = dbf.Table(r'\some\path\to\table.dbf')

connection = MySQLdb.connect(host='some_server', user='some_body', passwd='complexicate me!', db='the_db')
cursor = connection.cursor()

cusor.execute('command to recreate table') # yes, my SQL is weak  :(
                                           # other option is to use REPLACE below, and skip this step

for record in legacy_table:
    cursor.execute(
        'insert into table_name values (%s, %s, %s)',
        args=(record.name, record.age, record.comment)
        )

# for performance, executemany is better -- I _think_ this will work
cursor.executemany(
    'insert into table_name values (%s, %s, %s)',
    args = [(record.name, record.age, record.comment) for record in legacy_table])

This will hopefully get you started. Feel free to ask more questions.