SDF (Standard Database Format) converter

[Raiko]

Hello folks,

does anybody have a SDF file converter or a function that does the trick? I'd like to read in directly SDF files in order to avoid the smug references of colleague who's converting it with a matlab routine 😉

I'm using MC15 w050 on a win 7, 62 byte machine.

Raiko

[LucMeekes]

Hmm. 62 byte machine. That's very special  !

Do you have a (link to the) file format description for SDF?

Luc

[Raiko]

Yes, 62 byte machine is very special indeed !!!

Unfortunately, I do not have a format descrition. I've tried to read in per READBIN, but all I got was some gobbledygook.

Raiko

[LucMeekes]

Maybe this helps. I wrote this in 2005.... no guarantee.

Success!
Luc

[Raiko]

Hello Luc,

thank you very much for your effort. it doesn't read the file in. Apparently, the format definition is way different.

Thanks

Raiko

[LucMeekes]

Do you have an example file that you can share?

Luc

[Raiko]

Hello Luc,

try this one

Thanks again

Raiko

[LucMeekes]

The .sdf extension is used and abused for many file formats.

It's not the Standard Database File format that SQL CE  (whatever that may be) understands.

Does Matlab read it in natively, or did the colleage write a .m script to read it?

What program produced the file?

Luc

[Raiko]

Hello Luc,

no Matlab does not read it in natively but my colleague had, by trial and error, find out what's in what field. Although, he could at least see some fields. As I said, when I tried the same with READBIN, Mathcad showed me some "wingdings" characters but no data.

The data comes from a 12 channel data logger (Hottinger Baldwin). I should ask them for some assistance.

Raiko

[LucMeekes]

I opened the file with Notepad and it appears that the file consists of a header part and a data part. The header part contains a few strings. Without further information it will be hard to interpret it.

The website of the DAQ vendor does not refer to .sdf files....

Do you use Labview with the logger?

Luc

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

You can read the header, in fact you can read the whole file; but I haven't figured out the binary (endian, byte, double, float, int16, int32, etc.)  But here's a start. . .

[Raiko]

Hello Fred,

thank you for the reader. The problem is: I know diddly about the structure of the SDF data and therefore can only guess. The results are... well.

 I need to contact the supplier of the data logger (Hottinger Baldwin) to get more information.

Raiko