------------------------------------
			XBase and DBD::XBase
		------------------------------------

This is the README file for the XBase and DBD::XBase packages.

Module XBase provides access to XBase data files, namely .dbf and
.dbt. It provides "native" interface to the table's content.
Currently, it reads and writes these two types of files.

The man page XBase(3) is included. DBD::XBase is intended DBD::*
interface to XBase but it does not exist yet.

I would appreciate any nice little scripts that I could put into the
t directory. Also, nice tables with interesting features would help me
in writing the parsers.

Briefly, what is this about, why is not Xbase-1.07 enough? It might be
enough, but: This is an independent attempt to make interface to dBase
and Fox* tables. The main change (currently) are the added writing
capabilities. The interface is different and hopefully more pleasant.
The module is use strict clean and tries to handle error nicely.

And yes, this is alpha software. I will be glad to hear about you
testing it and I will try to fix any bugs and add new features but
please, test it on a backup copy of your data. The more tests we do
now, the sooner we can feel the module is safe and usable.


Installation: Download the tar.gz, unpack it, change to the DBD-XBase-*
	directory. Then do

	perl Makefile.PL
	make
	make test
	make install

or you can use CPAN module and just type "install DBD::XBase". You
really should have 5.004 to run cool.

Problems: If anything goes wrong when installing, please send me output
of you installation messages and of make test TEST_VERBOSE=1. If there
are error when actually running it on your data, please send me the
messages (errstr) and if possible, you data files that cause the
problems.

Available:
	http://www.fi.muni.cz/~adelton/perl/ and on your favorite CPAN
	site.

Copyright: (c) 1997 Jan Pazdziora, adelton@fi.muni.cz. All rights
	reserved. This library is free software; you can redistribute
	it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.