Thus, they can be opened in Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc, and many other programs. DBF files were one of the first database files with a header that allows programs that do not natively know the data structure in a specific file to read DBF files regardless. This page contains information on the MDB file extension (Microsoft Access Database), a popular document file format. It has been used in the proceeding versions of dBASE III, III+, and IV. As a file format, DBF has been introduced in dBASE II. The contents of a DBF file comprise multiple sets of data that are organized and stored in arrays. If you have a client that needs to manipulate the database, just copy and paste the old. After AAS 2018 the complete data are in MDF that is easily manipulated in SQL Management Studio. This popularity is based on the easy comprehend the structure and the fact that DBF was one of the earliest files of its type adapted by the database community. If you are working with Advance Steel in a version before 2018, all the files already are in MDB, so there is no need to convert to MDB.
Other 'xBASE' applications support the file format as well. Due to the file format's popularity, dBASE is not the only database program that supports DBF files. The database management software dBASE used the DBF extension to save its standard database files.