dbf

[charles_kieny]

NULL

[goose_rj]

please native dbf access to be provided

[Joabel_Barbieri]

weird that we need to vote to get dbf opened. This should be basic !!!

[ken_skinner]

Definitely - SAP allows export via dbf file so would make it easy to pick up in PBI.

[fbcideas_migusr]

While I note there are a few solution to importing DBF files into PowerQuery, there is a fundamental problem with the DSN type approach using

• Odbc.DataSource
• Odbc.Query
• OleDb.DataSource
• OleDb.Query

It requires that the DBF file exist in the local file system. Should the DBF file exist:

• in a Zip archive
• on the Web

The DSN approach breaks down since the existing Odbc.* and OleDb.* function do not permit binary contents to be specified.

For example:

dbfBinary = Web.Contents( "https://example.org/my.dbf" )

None of the Odbc.* or OleDB.* functions can be used to produce a table from a binary DBF. PowerQuery really needs something like:

dbfBinary = Web.Contents( "https://example.org/my.dbf" ),

dbfTable = Dbf.Contents( dbfBinary )

this could also work for the local file system or even extracting the DBF from a Zip archive:

dbfOptions = [ ],

dbfBinary1 = File.Contents( "C:\my.dbf" ),

dbfTable1 = Dbf.Contents( dbfBinary1, dbfOptions ),

zipBinary = File.Contents( "C:\my.zip" ),

zipTable = ZipArchiveDirectory( zipBinary ),

dbfBinary2 = ZipArchiveContents( zipTable, "my.dbf" ),

dbfTable2 = Dbf.Contents( dbfBinary2, dbfOptions )

Please add a Dbf.Contents function to PowerQuery to allow these additional use cases.