Hi,
I'd start out using JEdit and a plug-in called HexEdit;
www.jedit.org. Look at the database file sun supplied (or even better, of course,
copy it to another filename so as not to damage that very
important file).
Assume that the header says that every record is 10 bytes long.
Then bytes 0 through 9 is record 0.
Bytes 10 through 19 is record 1, and so forth.
And, you'd also have to take into account the offset or space
the header itself take up at the beginning of the file.
The first thing I did when I received this assignment was to
dump out the file, compare the values in it with the assignment
instructions, look for inconsistencies, and then write a small
program to read in the header information and then read in
all the data in the file.
Thanks,
Javini Javono