Re: Re: Re: ESP+ Storage .rep repository

You have two problems - the first is that the .REP file is sort of like a .ZIP file in that it is just a container for files. The purpose of the code you have asked me about is to unpack the contents of this archive. Each individual record in an ESP+ Storage database is compressed with LZW. In the documentation I make note of a function that you must provide - it is a wrapper around what on a Unix machine would be /usr/bin/uncompress. There is no natural analogue on a Windows machine so you will have to fetch UnxUtils and get uncompress.exe from that.

Now you pick up Randal Schwartz' book Learning Perl on Win32 Systems and find out how to write the wrapper function around your newly acquired uncompress.exe executable.

The last step, maybe... go run the example code. It is sufficient to extract the contents of an ESP Storage database out to a separate disc file per record. You probably still don't have readable text in those files but now you can tackle the next step which is to make sense of whatever format the data is really stored in.

Good luck and let me know how this goes. By the way, is there something happening to the makers of this ESP+ Storage software? I also got an e-mail or two from other people about getting text back from an ESP+ Storage database. It makes a person wonder.

Comment on Re: Re: Re: ESP+ Storage .rep repository

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Re: Re: Re: Re: ESP+ Storage .rep repository by Socep (Initiate) on May 27, 2004 at 20:54 UTC
Hi, thanks again. Following your words, I downloaded an uncompress.exe program. In addition, i was reading in detail your prograsms, specially reader.pm, but i can undertand some things. For example, were do you obtain the $COMPRESS_MAGIC_NUMBER, and the others parameters. In the other hand, can you explain me what is the structure of the record .rep file, start char, header lenght or position in the record, data, end of file. Or if you have documentation about that, i wiil appreciate this. I want email to the other person than you know that getting text back from ESP+ Storage repository. Particulary i want to know if they have a solution base on windows. I am thankful to you, if you let me know their emails. I am sorry, my english is not the best, but i hope you can undertand me. Thank you very much	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ESP+ Storage .rep repository by diotalevi (Canon) on May 27, 2004 at 22:02 UTC
No, I can't give you that person's e-mail address. You've also gotten yourself on a tangent. There is nothing in Reader.pm that you should be looking at if you intend to extract your data. Go read http://search.cpan.org/src/JJORE/ESPPlus-Storage-0.01/eg/read.pl which is an example script for extracting the contents of a .REP file. If you really want to understand how a .REP file is structured then please learn perl to a sufficient level to understand my source code as provided in Reader.pm. I will not explain its structure separately from that code as there is no need to. I don't think you need to do this to accomplish the extraction goal that you have described to me.	[reply]
Re^6: ESP+ Storage .rep repository by Socep (Initiate) on Jun 15, 2004 at 16:08 UTC
Hi Joshua. I was reading in detail your programs code. Now i have the following problem. According with your programs the structure of the record in the .rep file is: header + ( magic number + compress body) <next record with the same structure> the header structure is: H=058;T=0;L=1086;C=3;U=1075863338;A=cto8;AFP=v02/04/04,o0; where H=058 indicate the lenght of the header in this case 58, L=1086 indicate the lenght of the uncompressed file . when i process the first record the resutl is ok, but with the next records the uncompress function produce a bad output. I extract the string between the magic number and the last caracter before the new header to produce the .z file, and then uncompress it. Please let me know where i have the error. Thanks again	[reply]
Re^7: ESP+ Storage .rep repository by diotalevi (Canon) on Jun 15, 2004 at 16:21 UTC
Re^8: ESP+ Storage .rep repository by Socep (Initiate) on Jun 15, 2004 at 17:35 UTC
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ESP+ Storage .rep repository by Socep (Initiate) on May 28, 2004 at 12:25 UTC
Thank you very much for your collaboration. I will follow your advice. Even though the time is a determining factor, I will try to learn Perl to understand the code of your programs in detail. If in the next days you decide to give me the emails of the other people, I will be highly thanked with you. Again I appreciate all your collaboration. You do not forget that you can contact to me whenever you want. Any thing that you need, please you do not doubt in writing to me. my email is rocasoc@hotmail.com	[reply]