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Subject:RE: Tools: PDF to SQL From:"Gilger.John" <JGilger -at- acresgaming -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 23 Aug 2002 08:26:47 -0700
Matthew Horn advised:
1. Export the PDF as an RTF document
2. Open RTF in favorite word processor (Word).
3. Convert to simple text format (TXT).
4. Buy a book on Perl. Laura LeMay's book will get you up to speed fast. And I believe she is a member of this list.
5. Write script that uses Perl's text-manipulation functions to extract data from text file.
6. Extend this script or write another script that converts the extracted data into SQL statements.
7. Insert SQL into database.
When Gregory Sweet asked:
I've had a request to come up with some method of converting data stored in PDFs to data suitable to be stored in a SqlServer DB. I checked out PDFzone and came up with a product called BCLJade and another called Redwing. Redwing seems to be out because it's not compatible with Acrobat 5 and BCLjade seems very limited (writing each line break as a new record).
Perl had a database interface module, DBI, that makes this a simple task.
If you don't understand the regexs (text manipulation tools) that will be necessary for this, the second edition of "Mastering Regular Expressions" is now available. It is excellent!
HTH
John Gilger
Senior Technical Writer
Acres Gaming, Inc.
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