I got this work assignment from my boss where I shall try to get information from an old database. The thing is, we know nothing about it. We hope it is some known format and not something the developer made himself.
It comes standalone with an application (unknown language) and seems to be a mix of file types. In one folder there are, for example:
MISCINFO.BRG (27 531 kb)
MISCINFO.IDX (264 kb)
MISCINFO.LOG (30 422 kb)
In another folder where there are a bunch of VIS-files.
I don't really know where to start. I need some driver to access these files, preferbly by ODBC or just by open them somehow.
.brg could be a bridge file mentioned here:
http://www.recital.com/adminDBS.htm
The application in question comes with some DLL files. One of them is DATABASE.DLL, which contains a couple of names of people in plain text. I've searched some names on Google and found a Delphi programmer which I've contacted and waiting reply from. I've verified Delphi as the application language with some other sources.
According to Dependency Walker the DATABASE.DLL contains some functions for open/close a connection and fetching, updating and deleting data. Some functions indicates the DLL to be custom made. Perhaps I can use the same DLL.
Dependecy Walker only shows exported functions and not anything about parameters. Some files it can't open at all because they are 16-bit.
Well, the best way to go is to look at what software is known to use files with those extensions. LOG isn't much use, but BRG, VIS and IDX are reasonably rare.
VIS files:
Picture File
StudioPro 3D File
Vision Executive (Report) by Lasata Software
VISkompakt (Objects Description File) by PDV-Systeme GmbH
Vista Graphics
BRG files:
The only reference I can find is for Age of Mythology, which seems unlikely.
IDX files:
AOL (Temporary Internet Mail File)
ArcView (Geocoding Index For Read-Only Datasets) by ESRI
Ca Visual Objects Platform for Developer (CAVO) (Index File) by CA
Clip Gallery 1.x (Index) by Microsoft Corporation
Complete Works (Index File) by Toplevel Computing
Corel QuickFinder Information
FAX File
FoxPro (Index) by Microsoft Corporation
ICQ (Index) by ICQ Inc.
Java (Applet Cache Index) by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
LaTeX Index
NoX
Outlook Express (Mailbox Index) by Microsoft Corporation
Pro/ENGINEER (Index File) by PTC
RCA/Lyra Handheld MP3 Player (Database Index) by RCA
Symantec Q&A (Relational Database Index File) by Symantec Corporation
VSFilter (Index File)
Since none of those look that hopeful (there are no products I can see in the lists for VIS files and IDX files), I think unfortunately your hopes that it's not a custom format seem likely to be in vain.
You might want to try the 'file' on those files on a linux system. File ignores the file extension, it actually examines the file to identify it.
So copy the files to a linux machine and execute the following command in a terminal window:
Usage:
$ cd my_directory_with_unknownfiles
$ file *
Related
MSI database contains set of tables, and I can successfully enumerate File table, which has all deployable file' meta-deta. What I need to extract is the actual contents of those files. msiexec, lessmsi, 7-zip all can do it, but I couldn't find any source/API to do it.
What I've discovered it that all other (resource) files are in Binary table, and Data field can be used to get content of those files (like icons, custom DLL etc).
Further, I found and know that Media table contains information about the .CAB file (MSI has all content embedded with <MediaTemplate EmbedCab="yes"/>. This simply means the CAB file contains the actual content. I probably need to read contents from "Structured Storage" of the .msi file.
How to extract the contents of CAB/MSI file, using native C Msi* functions?
Phil has given you the easy/simple answer but I thought I might give you a little more information since you've done some research. Checkout:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa372919(v=vs.85).aspx
This is where the structured storage is. You'll see something like Disk1.cab as the Name (PK) and binary data. The data is a CAB file with the file entry in the cab matching the File.File column. From there you can use the File.FileName column to get the short name and long name (you'll want the long name no doubt) and do a joint to the Component table to get the directory table ID.
You'll also need to recurse the directory table to build the tree of directories and know where to put the files.
Fun stuff. There's some libraries in C# that make this WAY simpler. Or just call msiexec /a as Phil says. :)
The most straightforward to extract all the files to some location is to install the product in "advertised" mode. If you do a:
msiexec /a [path to msi] TARGETDIR=[some folder]
you'll see what happens.
In C++ call MsiInstallProduct () with that command line.
You have gotten many good answers already, including the use of dark.exe from the WiX toolkit. By downloading the WiX source code you should be able to get the code you need ready-made from there. I assume you may already have done this.
Chris has already linked to the DTF code you can check, but here is a link directly to dark.exe as well: https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix3/tree/develop/src/tools/dark. I would try both. This is C#, you seem to want native.
UPDATE: Before I get to the Win32 features you can use, check out this little summary of the C# DTF features: How to programmatically read the properties inside an MSI file?
Native Win32 functions: The database functions to deal with an MSI file can be found on MSDN (this is to deal with the MSI file as a database). There are also MSI Installer Functions (used to deal with the MSI file as an actual installer).
You can certainly find good examples of native code for this with a good Google search. Have fun!
BTW: It would help with a description of the actual problem you are trying to solve as well as what you need technically. There could - as always - be less involved ways to achieve what you need. Unless you are writing a security software or malware scanner or something super-involved.
And so it is clear: WiX's dark.exe fully decompiles MSI files into WiX source files and the resource files used to build them - you can then text and binary compare the various types of content (text compare for tables, binary compare for binaries, etc...). The process to do so via command line is described in the following answer: How can I compare the content of two (or more) MSI files? (this is about comparing MSI files, but one option to do so is to decompile them - see section on dark.exe - just for reference for others who find your question).
I like to link things together so we can find content easily at a later point in time. Strictly speaking it doesn't seem necessary here, you have what you need I think but others could perhaps benefit from some further links. Here are some related links:
Extract MSI from EXE.
What is the purpose of administrative installation initiated using msiexec /a?
How do I extract files from an MSI package? (explains why you should not use 7-Zip to extract).
I used Sphinx4 for some time which really fits my needs. I load a recognizer, pass the audio data to it and use the recognized String in my application.
Right now I'm working on a C application (C++ is unfortunately not an option) where I need something similar and thought that I could use Sphinx3 which is written in C.
The problem is that I don't really know how it is used inside an application and there is no "Hello World"-example as Sphinx4 provides it.
I already compiled and installed sphinxbase and sphinx3 and now I can include the sphinx header files in my application.
Now to my questions:
Is there a "simple" and well documented example application that uses sphinx3 from a C environment?
How can I load up the sphinx3 engine and call a recognizer with my binary audio data?
OR: Do I need to start an application like "sphinx3_decode" and call it from my own application? If so, is there an example application for that?
Thank you in advance!
Best regards,
Robert
It's not recommended to use Sphinx3. From the website:
Sphinx-3 is CMU’s large vocabulary speech recognition system. It’s
older C based decoder that we continue to maintain. It’s planned to
make it obsolete in the future, it’s still most accurate decoder for
large vocabulary tasks. We are using it as a baseline to check the
recognizer accuracy. This decoder is only intended for researchers who
want to evaluate bleeding edge methods in ASR like tree search method.
If you need to use a decoder you should use pocketsphinx. You can find the tutorial and the API documentation on the website
http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/tutorialpocketsphinx
http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/api/pocketsphinx/pocketsphinx_8h.html
I Recently worked on an Intregated Project on Punjabi Language.
Here are some steps that we used...
First we recorded the punjabi audio data in a vaccumed room in 16000 hz sample rate.
Then we took the recorded data and segmented it using Praat Software into small wav and raw files of 2 to 30 sec and saved them in a folder named train.
Then we took a system having Linux ie. Ubuntu and installed the required plug in like autoconfig, automake etc and untarred Sphinx 3 along with 4 packages that are cmuclmtk, pocketsphinx, sphinxbase, sphinxtrain.
Then according to the small wav files we made many files like transcription, dic, phone, filler, file id, ccs etc.
Then we opened the terminal and typed –"sphinx_fe” to check the whether the sphinx is functional or not.
Then we created an folder named “man” and then in terminal wrote its path.
Then we run the command- “sphinxtrain –t man setup”. By running this command an folder named “etc” will be formed in “man” folder containing files “feat_paramas” & ”config”.
Changes were made in the in the config file according to our data.
Then we moved all the files that we created before ie. transcription, dic in the etc folder in that is located in man folder.
Then we placed ‘lang1.sh” script in etc folder and remaining 4 scripts in man folder.
Then we opened the path for etc folder in terminal and run command- “lang1.sh”
Then we run series of commands in terminal – “mfcgen2.sh” then “verify3.sh” then “hmm4.sh” and at last “end-test.sh” to get the final result.
Rest if you have worked on Sphinx 4 then you may know about the files that are mentioned above in the steps. I hope this helps you.
Whenever I open one of the Quantum Grid demos in Delphi XE Pro (on Windows 7 32-bit), the following error is displayed for every table (I think) in the project:
error message http://www.tranglos.com/img/qgerror.png
The message is:
Network initialization failed.
File or directory does not exist.
File: C:\PDOXUSRS.NET
Permission denied.
Directory: C:\.
I understand permission issues writing to c:\, but the result is that while I can build and run the demo projects, no data is displayed, which makes the demos rather useless. And what kind of database writes its configuration to c:\ directory in the 21st century anyway? :) (Yes, I know very little about Paradox databases, but I won't ever be using one either. I just want to learn how to use the grid.)
Using BDE Administrator I've tried changing the Paradox "NET DIR" value to a folder with write permissions on the C drive. Result: now the database tables cannot find their data:
Path not found.
File: C:..\..\Data\GENRES.DB.
...and the unhelpfully truncated path gives no indication where the files are expected to be.
Is there a way to work around the problem so that the demos can load their sample data correctly?
Did you install the BDE correctly? It should use the DBDEMOS files. Do you see such an alias in the BDE administration utility? Can you open that database in one of the Delphi demos?
The BDE is not a XXI century database, it was developed twenty years ago and never upgraded lately. It's an obsolete tecnology, but because it comes still with every release of Delphi with a known database it is still often used in demos because nothing new has to be installed.
Anyway that file is not its configuration file. It's a sharing lock file to allow more than one user to use the database concurrently. Because it is a file based database without a central server, it has to use such kind of shared files. Usually its position is changed to a network share, but it defaults to C:\ for historical reasons.
Anyway it's not only the BDE still attempting to write in the prong directories. I still see a full bunch of applications attempting to write to C:\ (especially logs) or other read-only positions.
Using BDE Admin to change the location for PDOXUSRS.NET helped, but it wasn't sufficient. DevExpress did the right thing in specifying a relative folder for the data location, and the relative folder seems perfectly allright, but for some reason the DB can't find it.
Solution: under the \Demos\ folder find all the *.dfm files that contain the string
..\..\Data
and replace that string with the absolute path to the demos folder. That done, all the demos open correctly.
I know this message from our own applications. It has to do with security measures introduced with Windows Vista. The operating system trying to protect critical files denies access to them. There is a method how to bypass this mechanism without compromising security. Try to run your application in compatibility mode. When application is running in compatibility mode, read / write operations from / to system folders are redirected to "safe" directories located in C:\Users[Current User]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore.
More info on http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Protecting-System-Files-UAC-Virtualization-Part1.html.
I have one library using one function in the PnP configuration manager library. Therefor, the cfgmgr32.lib is included in our build.
But I don't know where it came from, nor do I know what license is attached to it. I assume it was in the DDK.
Could one label this as "Proprietary" software?
First I assume that you are talking about a lib that is part of the windows driver kit:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg487428
Per: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg487463 "How to get the Windows DDK"
I end up there http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=36a2630f-5d56-43b5-b996-7633f2ec14ff and a download url of: http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/A/2/4A25C7D5-EFBE-4182-B6A9-AE6850409A78/GRMWDK_EN_7600_1.ISO ...
This is a large ISO image.
Once you have that, the terms of the license should be detailed in the ISO somewhere.
Per: http://www.microsoft.com/taiwan/whdc/devtools/wdk/RelNotesW7.mspx#EPD
"The contents included in the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) are licensed to you, the end user. Your use of the WDK is subject to the terms of an End User License Agreement (EULA) that accompanies the WDK and is located in the WDK installation directory. The name of the file is License.rtf. Before you access or use the WDK, you must read and accept the terms of the EULA. If you do not agree to the terms of the EULA, you are not authorized to use the WDK."
So get the ISO, install and get the exact license.
Also the doc is there:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg487458
this is smaller and should also contain license terms.
I've an application, that uses encrypted (txt) files to store data. After investigating the decompiled assembly I concluded that it's a file of some DBMS. So how can find out which DBMS is this application using to store it's data, so that I can attach that file to the correct DBMS.
This is little application and there is no license problem. I can just ask the owner to gimme the data, but just curious to solve this myself.
MORE INFO:
Platform is Windows, and after trying couple of decompilers I concluded that it WAS written in Visual C++. However I couldn't fully decompile this exe, otherwise I just could find out it from the source code.
A couple ideas.
If opening the file in a HEX editor doesn't give you any information (like a magic identifier at the start of the file, which you can pop into google, then:
Use the depends tool from microsoft to grab a list of the DLLs being loaded by the application. Chances are whatever DBMS it's using is contained in an external library.
If the first two suggestions yield nothing, load the executable into IDA pro freeware and have a look at the code which is creating these files.