What is a .DBF file?
DBF is a dBASE database table, still used to hold the attributes of GIS shapefiles.
- Did you know
- The dBASE table format from the 1980s lives on as the attribute table of every shapefile.
- DBF was introduced with Ashton-Tate’s dBASE II around 1980 and spawned a whole family of compatible “xBase” programs.
- Its header self-documents each field’s name, type and length, which helped the format outlive dBASE itself.
- What Analyser reads
- Inspect geospatial and GIS files without a map: TopoJSON, OpenStreetMap XML, Esri Shapefile siblings (SHP/SHX/DBF/PRJ/CPG), world files, GML, NMEA GPS logs, IGC flight logs, MapInfo TAB/MIF, GDAL VRT, PMTiles, DTED terrain, Esri ASCII grids and SRTM .hgt - surfacing CRS/EPSG, feature/record counts, bounding boxes and elevation ranges. GRIB/NetCDF/GeoPackage/MBTiles/MrSID/ECW identified.
- Depth of analysis
- .DBF is an identification-grade format: Analyser recognises it from its bytes and decodes the header metadata it carries, rather than opening it in a full viewer. Formats that do get a full viewer are marked "Full" on the formats page.
- Open a .DBF file
- Drag a .DBF file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It is identified entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.