What a PDB eBook is
PDB is the PalmDOC format, an early eBook format from the days of Palm handheld computers. Many older e-readers, handheld devices, and a number of hobbyist reading apps still open it, because it is simple and very small. PDF to PDB lets you read a document on those devices by converting it to this format.
How the file is built
PDF Studio extracts the text of each page and packs it into a standard PalmDOC database: a header, followed by uncompressed text split into 4096-byte records, with a form-feed marker between pages. The result is saved as a .pdb file named after your PDF. The conversion runs in your browser, so the PDF is not uploaded.
PalmDOC is a single-byte text format. Letters in the Western European range (such as é, ü, and ñ) are kept, typographic punctuation such as curly quotes and long dashes is converted to plain equivalents, and characters outside that range, for example Chinese, Arabic, or Cyrillic text, appear as question marks.
What you will and will not get
You get the document’s text, in reading order. Images, fonts, colors, tables, and page layout are not included, because the format is text-only. Scanned PDFs contain no text, so run OCR PDF first. The file is not compressed, so it is larger than it could be, but it opens in the widest range of readers.
Other formats to consider
Modern e-readers prefer EPUB, which supports images and layout and which this site does not currently produce. For text you want to read or edit on a computer, Extract Text creates a plain text file, and PDF to Word keeps more formatting. Use PDF to PDB specifically when a Palm-compatible reader or a legacy device needs it.