JSankey PalmOS Software

Note - This program does not work correctly under PalmOS 5.0 (causes spontaneous soft reset) due to one of the many bugs in that version of the OS. It appears to work alright under 5.2 but has not been tested thoroughly.

Overview

DB View is intended as a developer's tool to view the contents of Palm databases at a low level. I've found a few times when debugging applications that I really need to see what is being stored without relying on the application in test, DB View lets you do exactly that and a few other things too.

Its important to note that no application of this type will be work perfectly for every conceivable file type, DB View its intended to be complicated enough to be useful in a wide range of situations but simple enough to be usable. Let me know if I've got this balance wrong.

Compatibility

PalmOS 3.5 and above
Sony High Resolution feature set required for zoom function

Installation / Usage

Download DbView.zip (30KB)
Extract the PRC file and use HotSync to transfer it onto your handheld
Run "DB View"
To learn more about DB View select "Summary..." from the Help menu, to get context help tap the "i" button to the right of the title bar on most forms

Reference

DB View is based around the concept of Interpreters. An Interpreter is a definition of which database to examine and how to convert the N bytes in each record to something a human can read. Interpreters are built from fields, each of which displays bytes as a particular data type (such as UInt32 or String) for a particular number of repetitions.

Structure fields define a grouping of normal fields which may be repeated a number of times. Any bytes remaining in a record after all Interpreter fields have been processed will be displayed in a default hexadecimal format. A simple example Interpreter for ToDo is as follows:

Name: Todo Interpreter
Database: ToDoDB
Fields:

Date: UInt16, No repeat

Pri: Hex Byte, No repeat

Text: String, No repeat

Note: String, No repeat

While DB View itself has a database which can be read with the following:

Name: DB View
Database: Interpreters-5JMS
Fields:

Name: String, No repeat

LocalID: UInt32, No repeat

Type: Char, Repeat fixed count 4

Creator: Char, Repeat fixed count 4

Card: UInt16, No repeat

FieldCount: UInt16, No repeat

Fields: Structure, Repeat to end, containing:

Type: Dec Byte, Repeat fixed count 2

Name: String, no repeat

Repeat: Int16, no repeat

Ownership: UInt16, no repeat

Have a play and you'll get the idea.

The main form represents a single record displayed using the active interpreter. If record info is on (View->Toggle Record Info) the record size and attributes such as dirty or busy are shown at the top.

Use the left and right arrows or the scroll keys to move to the previous or next record, or click on the record number selector (between the arrows) to jump to a record by number. Use the Change button to switch to a different interpreter or to create new and edit existing interpreters. On handhelds with the Sony Clie high resolution feature set, use the zoom button (to the left of Change) to switch between font sizes. Use Database Info... on the view menu to view general information about the current database.

Db View displays all records in all databases, even those marked secret. If you believe that PalmOS security implies anything about how secure your data is, this could be a risk. Currently DB View does not provide any way of showing which category a record is in.

Version History

1.0	Initial Release

page last updated: 2 November 2003