.dbf file with Data Type [M] is not known by OLEDB Visual Fox Pro Driver

Question

I'm trying to integrate a few .dbf and .fpt files into an MS SQL Server using Visual Studio (SSIS) and the OLEDB Visual Fox Pro Driver. For most of the files the integration works fine. But 5 of them are not recognized correctly by the Connection Manager. I tried to figure out the problem (using a HEX Editor) and find out that there is a datatype "M" for a few columns:

STPNAME....M◄...  <-ASCII
STPNAME....M....  <-ANSI

This seems not to be a known datatype for .dbf files. I also tried to open the files by using the App "DBF open File Tool". This Tool could open the database but when i try to fix the file through the recovery function the file gets saved without any changes.

Do you have any ideas how i could fix that issue?

Answer 1

M is the Memo type, which is basically an unbounded Char.

I'm surprised the OLEDB driver doesn't recognize it -- unless the associated .fpt files for those five are missing?

As for working around, you could remove the Memo fields (and lose the data -- unless those .fpt files are gone, in which case the data is already lost).