Accessing Some of PowerChurch Tables

steviebu · Post by **steviebu** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 8:37 pm

I need to access some of the data that our church stores in PowerChurch for display in another system that I am building. I was told that some of the data was in the Personal Profile section and some was in the Integrated Data section of the program. I don't want access to financial information and I'm certain that my church does not want me to have it either. Since PowerChurch uses FoxPro and FoxPro is a file-based DBMS, I was hoping that I could take copies of the files that contain the data that I need and use these files during my development work.

I have a few questions:

1. From this web site, I learned that the Personal Profile data is contained in the ME* tables. I grabbed the ME*.* files (ME.dbf, ME.cdx, ME.fpt, MECODES.DBF, MECODES.cdx, MEINFO.dbf, MEINFO.cdx, and MEINFO.fpt). I'm using Borland's Database Desktop to try to open the files, but I am getting an error message. Is the data encrypted or am I missing something? (I have FoxPro development experience, but it was 2.6--prior to Visual FoxPro). When I try to open the table through DD, the error is "Unable to open table. Corrupt table/index header.". However, PowerChurch accesses the data in these tables without a problem.

2. What is integrated data? Is there a table for it? Or is this a logical name for a set of data spread over a few files? If so, how would I identify the tables that I need for my information. (I only need about a dozen pieces of data).

Thanks,
Steve

Post by **Jeff** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 3:38 pm

Steve,

The problem is most likely that the Borland Database Desktop will not read visual foxpro files. Visual Foxpro changed slightly the file header and you would probably get the error message you indicated. Does it say it will read VFP tables?

You are right the ME* files are the Personal Profiles tables. If you need access to the Family Information they are in the MA* tables. There are no tables for the integrated screen, it just provides an interface to several modules at once.

If you are not looking to access the data in real time, you might want to try the export data option under the personal profiles menu. It will provide a flat file of the personal profile and family mailing list data in a number of different formats, including Foxpro 2.6 dbfs which should be compatible with your product.

If that won't work there are ODBC & OLE DB drivers available from microsoft to get access to VFP files. You can download them from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro/downl ... fault.aspx

steviebu · Post by **steviebu** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 5:02 pm

Jeff,

Thanks for the reply. There is one additional piece of information that I forgot to add to my original post. I can read the SK and SKREF tables in Database Desktop just fine. And I can access the SKREF tables in my code and display the data contained in the SKILL_NO and DESC fields in a list box in my application. Is there something different between the SK* tables and the ME* tables? I read where VFP has a Database Container (.DBC). Could that be a factor here? I noticed that there is one .dbc file in the installation directory: 46521706.DBC.

Thanks for the clarification on the Integrated Data. I'm pretty sure that the info that I need will be in the ME* and MA* tables.

I am hoping to access the data in real time. But if I have to, I will fall back to the export data option.

Thanks again for the input,
Steve

steviebu · Post by **steviebu** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 11:13 pm

After Googling the error message, I have learned that VFP handles memo fields differently than FoxPro 2.6 did. And the native driver in the Borland Database Engine (and Database Desktop) is for FoxPro 2.6 and below. That is why I could read the SK* tables, but not the ME*.

I downloaded and installed the ODBC driver for FoxPro and am able to access the ME.dbf file in my code through it.

Thanks again Jeff for your response.

Steve

Post by **Jeff** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 10:14 am

I am glad you got it to work. We don't use a DBC for our data. If there is one in your folder, it was probably created by the custom report writer built in to PowerChurch. We do create a temporary one when a customer goes into the edit report layout portion because a few features in there work better when there is a DBC. It should be safe to delete it.