How to open a DaRT extract

You have received a DaRT extract — or perhaps you have just come across a folder full of files labelled something like DART, DART_01, DART_02, and so on — and you are wondering what to do with them. This post explains what you are looking at and what you actually need to open it.

A DaRT extract is not a single file

The first thing to know is that a DaRT extract is not a single file you can simply double-click and open. It is a collection of files that together make up one dataset. The reason is straightforward: a DaRT extract contains many different tables, some of which can be very large. That volume of data does not fit comfortably into one file, so SAP splits the extract across multiple files automatically when a size limit is reached. Each file is a continuation of the previous one.

When you receive a DaRT extract, you will typically find a folder containing several of these files. The first file carries the name chosen at extraction time without any number (e.g. DART), and each continuation file adds a two-digit number (DART_01, DART_02, …). They all belong together and need to be read as a whole.

You can open the files in a text editor — but it will not get you far

The files are plain text files. There is nothing stopping you from opening one in Notepad, TextEdit, or any other text editor. What you will see is line after line of values separated by a delimiter such as a comma or semicolon. Something like this:

050000011100011400;K;2023;0100000001;...

Technically readable. Practically meaningless — at least at first glance.

The problem is not the text editor. The problem is that the DaRT format is highly structured and self-describing, and that structure is not visible when you just open a file. Every line begins with a short code that tells you what kind of record it is: a financial document header, a line item, a vendor master record, a checksum, and so on. There are dozens of different record types, each with its own set of fields. Without knowing which code maps to which record type and which position maps to which field, the data is impossible to interpret.

What is inside a DaRT extract

To understand why the raw text looks the way it does, it helps to know what is actually in there. A DaRT extract is organised into segments. Each segment contains a specific type of data. The main types are:

• Transaction data — the actual financial records: general ledger postings, document headers and line items, materials movements, sales and purchasing documents. This is the bulk of the extract.
• Master data — the reference data that the transactions relate to: vendors, customers, G/L accounts, cost centres, materials, and more.
• Selection data — a record of the criteria used when the extract was created: which company codes were included, which fiscal years, which date ranges.
• Metadata — a technical description of all the other segments: what fields they contain, what data type each field has, and how long each field is. This is what makes the format self-describing.
• Checksums — values that allow you to verify the integrity of the extract and confirm that no records have been altered or removed.
• A segment directory — an index at the end of the extract that tells a reader program where each segment starts in the file, so that data can be located efficiently.

All of these different types of records sit interleaved in the same flat text files. The metadata segment is particularly important: it is what a program needs to read in order to understand the structure of everything else.

Why you need a dedicated program

Reading a DaRT extract properly means doing several things in sequence: finding and parsing the metadata to understand the structure, then reading each data segment against that structure, matching transactions to master data, and presenting everything in a way that makes sense to a human reader. A text editor cannot do any of that. A spreadsheet cannot either — not with files that may be several gigabytes in size and that require the metadata to decode the other records.

German tax auditors traditionally use IDEA (by Caseware) to work with DaRT extracts. But IDEA is an expensive, general-purpose audit tool, and for tax advisors and their clients who simply want to open and explore a DaRT extract, it is more than what is needed.

DaRT Reader: built for exactly this

DaRT Reader is a purpose-built application for opening and exploring DaRT extracts. You point it at the folder containing your extract files, and it takes care of everything else: reading the metadata, decoding each record type, and presenting the data in a clear, navigable structure. You can browse the available tables, filter records, and search for specific documents — without writing a single line of code or setting up a database.

If you work in tax advisory, forensics, or internal audit and have a DaRT extract you need to work with, get in touch below to request a demo.