I was recently confronted with the fact that the Borland Database System Utility does not export the TEXT and BLOB columns to a .CSV file.

I searched online, and did not find anything very concrete that was free.

For those who run into a similar situation, here is how I solved it (I am also ready to export the data for you – in which case, send me a message):

• Install Delphi 6 (or any version that you have access to)

• Place a TDBISAMDatabase object on your form, and set the property Directory to the folder in which you have your DBISAM tables

• Place a TDBISAMQuery object on the form, and set the property Database to the name of the TDBISAMDatabase object.

• Place a button on the form, and double click it to go the the button’s click event. Paste, and adapt the code to the columns in your table, the following code:

  var
      myFile : TextFile;
  begin
      AssignFile(myFile, 'filename_of_export_data.csv');
      ReWrite(myFile);
  
      // Use the pipe "|" as column delimiter
      Writeln(myFile,'ID|Genus');  // Specify the column headers here
  
      QueryMain.SQL.Text := 'SELECT * FROM your_table_name ';
      QueryMain.Open;
  
      with QueryMain do
      begin
        First;
        while not eof do
        begin
          Writeln(myFile,
              FieldByName('FNId').AsString + '|' +
              QuotedStr(Utf8Encode(StringReplace(FieldByName('Name').AsString, #10#13, '', [rfReplaceAll])))
          );
  
  
          Next;
        end;
      end;
  
  CloseFile(myFile);
  

To export the images, place a another button on the form, double click it to open the button’s click event, and paste the following code:

var
  Strm: TFileStream;
begin
        QueryMain.SQL.Text := 'SELECT * FROM your_table_name '; //
        QueryMain.Open;

        with QueryMain do
        begin
          First;
          while not eof do
          begin
            // adapt the following code to the table's image field name
            Strm := TFileStream.Create('C:DelphiDelphi ProjectsHerbariumExportImagesimage_'+FieldByName('FNId').AsString+'_'+FieldByName('FNHerbariumId').AsString+'.jpg', fmCreate);
            try
              (FieldByName('FNImage') AS TBlobField).SaveToStream(Strm);
            finally
              Strm.Free;
            end;
            Next;
          end;
        end;

The above worked with Delphi version 6. It exported the TEXT columns, and also the images which were stored as BLOB columns