[thelist] MSSQL 2005 .bak file - extract data?

David Kaufman david at gigawatt.com
Tue Jun 2 08:40:51 CDT 2009


Hi Roger,

rogerharness at comcast.net wrote:
> 
> 'Volters, 
> 
> I realize I'm a little over my head with this, but does 
 > anyone have any suggestions on how I can extract data from
> an SQL 2005 .BAK file, for export into Excel/Access, in a
> relatively simple manner? 

No, not from their native db files or their binary backup format.  When 
we migrated evolt from MSSQL 2000, the only usable export we were able 
to import was a table-by-table save as... CSV.  Their other (tab, etc.) 
delimited export formats failed to preserve embedded line-breaks in text 
and/or other characters.  CSV worked like a charm though.

Also since we had more than (IIRC) 32,000 rows in some tables we weren't 
able to open or import the resulting csv files in Excel, but we were 
able to import them into mysql using perl with no problem.

> I'm trying to install MIcrosoft SQL Server 2005 on my system  
> so I can open this file up, but I'm struggling a bit to figure  
> out how to view the data, even after installing this software. 

I tried that too.  Never was able to get it to work.  I think we needed 
the binary logs too, but didn't have them.

> Are there any simple solutions to get to that data, other than  
> relying on a vendor to get the data to me in another format? 

Not that I know of.  Things may have improved between MSSQL 2000 and 
2005 but I'd tell the vendor you need the data in a non-proprietary 
format.  It's not an unreasonable request, IMO.

hth,

-dave



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