dbf

From: Rick Labs Sent: Tuesday, February 9, 2016 8:46 PM To: Power Query v2 Feedback Subject: Send a Frown - 2/9/2016 11:18 PM dbase format is poorly supported, and trying to make ODBC work for dbf is exhausting. dbf connection should be right under the "From Database" drop down. not there so select ODBC, so ...enter hell First asked for a connection string. Oops forgot to tell the user enclose that in single quotes.... Enter 'Driver={Microsoft dBASE Driver (*.dbf)};DriverID=277;Dbq=C:\Users ick\Desktop\QGIS\LeonAppraiser\downtown.dbf' Error Details: "ODBC: ERROR [IM002] [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified" Search on the error: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-access/microsoftodbc-driver-manager-data-source-name-not/05912292-e7a6-4f65-96ae-91305706518b Hummm 48762 views! Guess a few people have had trouble with ODBC connection strings! Endless searching and twiddling... hours of time lost. No problem, call the DBA, call the guy in the glass house, get the system administrator.... Oh, forgot this is "self serve BI" there IS no DBA, there is no glass house, and the user IS the Sys Ad. Well dbf is dead anyway, right? Look at ESRI shape files (the defacto map standard around the WORLD, still very much in use today... Military, Federal, State, Local, construction industry, real estate, geo/demographics, mapping.... Every exchange of map data in ESRI shapefile format has a dbf related to the geometry. you would think PowerQuery would eat this right up. A Use-case: connect to the dbf connect to a huge CSV, delimited, or fixed field size text file Extract from the huge CSV file only those rows that correspond to a row in the dbf calculate some new fields output a new CSV file with the enhancements... dbf is easily read direct in Excel, not exactly an "odd" or "newish" file structure. opening dbf in all types of open source databa