[Chicago-talk] Deciphering File Formats

[Jason A. Crome]

Good afternoon,

A high-profile client of ours has come to us with a dilemma, which I  
am in turn coming to the community with.  They have been working with  
a another company's software package for some time, and have years  
worth of data locked up in that company's proprietary file format.   
They are looking into switching away from that company's software  
package, but that company will neither provide them with the file  
format (for data conversion purposes), nor will they convert the data  
into a format that someone else could use.  So while our client owns  
their data, it is entirely useless to them at this point.  The sheer  
amount of data that they have makes re-entry impractical.

(sound familiar?  It's not Microsoft though)

This client can't wait for the legal system to resolve the issue, and  
needs access to that data soon.  They have come to us in search of  
help, but frankly, we have little experience in cracking file  
formats.   Does anyone out there have a knack for deciphering file  
formats?  Want to make a chunk of cash doing so?  Please contact me  
off-list at crome at devnetinc.com if you are interested.  I can provide  
more details and information, but would prefer to do so privately.

Thanks!
Jason Crome