🚀 go-pugleaf

We have a very special problem and are searching aiding advices from  
specialists.

We now have been offered the possibility to access some very valuable data.  
These data are stored on an IBM Tape. We want to convert it to some Macintosh  
Database Program, but we neither know a way to do this nor do we have any  
valuable experiences in any database program. 

The amount of data is about 250 GB, which is far too much. We coud make some  
preselection and come down to about 900MB, so we can store it on a relatively  
cheap 1.2GB disk. 

We are now searching for a possibility to transfer these data directly into a  
macintosh application (eg. 4th dimension). Are there any applications that are  
especially good for this task? Do we have to expect the data to grow or shrink?

The records on tape have fixed length, and so lots of empty spaces could be  
dropped while converting. Also there is 1 field that is about 700 byte long,  
but its information coud be coded into about 70 byte with a moderate  
programming effort. Is this possible while conversion?

We dont have enough capacities for storing the data from the tape on a disk  
before converting it, so conversion must be done on the fly.

To get additional information on this problem, we would like do contact several  
companies directly, for example Claris or ACI. Are there any email adresses  
around?

Thanx in advance for any help

==============================================
Peter Purgathofer (i didn t vote for him)
Institut f. Gestaltungs- und Wirkungsforschung
Techn. University Vienna / Computer Science
purgi@iguwnext.tuwien.ac.at
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"ROMANUS EUNT DOMUM" (Brian)