Does anyone have extensive experience with salesforce?

A client of mine has recovered a database from what he says was a salesforce installation on a server at his business. He wants to recover the contacts and whatever else he can from this.

I've looked into it, and it appears to be possible using salesforce.com, SQL, and DBAmp.

Before I burn hours of my time trying to make this work (I've setup a trial salesforce.com account, and downloaded a trial version of DBAmp) I thought I would see if there was anyone here that's done something similar, or could offer any insights?

Cheers!

if i had gone with teh breakaway crew from my work, i could have probably helped you with this;

they owned salesforce in brisbane briefly.

but i stayed in my safe little rut, so i know nothing.

Can't just log into the database and look in the tables?

Yeah that is why I am confused. I'm thinking it must be real old

sorry, i miss read

hey man - when you say sql, can you not just attach the database to a sql box and query for your data?? select * from rwlivedb.dbo.contacts or watever? what is the db file extension?