Highlights
- Move data between different COBOL file
formats.
- Load data files from text files.
- Move COBOL data to and from spreadsheets
and databases.
- Convert data from one code set to another
(e.g. ASCII to EBCDIC)
Supported File Formats
- Sequential
- Line Sequential (Text file)
- Indexed
- Relative
- Binary
- Comma-Separated Values (CSV, also known
as an RDB Loader File)
Supported Character Sets
- ASCII
- EBCDIC
- Other code conversions by editing the
User Defined Conversion Tables
Supported Data Types
All COBOL data types such as packed decimal
and binary data
Invocation Mode
Conversions are controlled using a command
line providing the ability to work in batch mode.
Detailed Features and Benefits
The table below lists key features and benefits
of Data Converter.
|
Feature Summary |
Detail of Feature |
Benefit
of Feature |
|
Text file conversions |
Converts
text files containing either fixed- or variable-length records between
EBCDIC and ASCII code systems and formats. |
Enables
exchange of source and text files between EBCDIC and ASCII systems,
or migration of code and text from EBCDIC systems to the Sun Solaris
platform. |
|
Data file conversions |
COBOL
products supported:
- NetCOBOL
for SPARC Architecture
- Sun National
COBOL
COBOL file organizations
supported:
- Record
sequential
- Line sequential
- Relative
- Indexed
Other file formats:
- CSV
suitable for passing data to/from databases
- Output to
text files
Character set
conversions between:
- EBCDIC
- ASCII
- User-defined
conversion tables
Supported data
types:
- All COBOL-specific
data types such as display numeric items with included signs
and packed decimal.
- Note that
the converter is able to perform conversions between data types
as well as changing field lengths.
|
Provides
the ability to perform most of the conversions required in typical
COBOL application use, such as:
- Migrating
data from one system to another
- Sharing data
between systems
- Loading test
files
- Unloading
data
|
|
Handling multiple record formats |
The
Data Converter can handle files that contain multiple record
formats. By defining a format selection control statement you
can specify which record format to use for different record types.
This feature
also lets you extract records of a particular format/type. |
Important
ability for supporting all existing files. |
| |
|
|
Overview of Using the Data Converter
The following examples
let you see the features of Data Converter at work.
Converting
EBCDIC COBOL Source to an ASCII Text File
Converting
EBCDIC Text to an ASCII Text File
Converting
a COBOL Indexed File to a CSV File
Converting EBCDIC COBOL
Source to an ASCII Text File
This example illustrates how you
would convert an 80-byte (fixed-length) EBCDIC text file (the format used
for COBOL source) to an ASCII text file (used for source files in the
Sun Solaris environment). The conversion is shown schematically in the
following diagram.
To perform the conversion
(on the Sun Solaris machine) you would enter the following command:
dataconvf -f SRC -itype
cobolsrc -icode ebcdic -otype text
You can see that the Data Converter command
line takes options in the form "-option-name" followed by a
space and the option parameter.
Data Converter creates the output file name
by appending ".out" to the input file name.
You don't need to specify the output code
type (using the -ocode option) as it defaults to ASCII.
Converting
EBCDIC Text to an ASCII Text File
This example is very similar to the last
but illustrates that Data Converter can handle variable length EBCDIC
text files that specify the length of each record in a Record Descriptor
Word (RDW) in the first four bytes of each record.
The process is illustrated in the following
diagram:
And is performed using the following command:
dataconvf -f TEXT -itype
text -icode ebcdic -otype text
Converting
a COBOL Indexed File to a CSV File
In this example we show how
you would convert a COBOL indexed file to a CSV file, as illustrated in
the following diagram:
The command line for this operation is:
dataconvf -f AMASTER
-itype cblfile -icobfl idx,1,20 -otype rdb -csv1
Notice that the data definition file, "AMASTER.format"
is not specified in the command line - Data Converter looks for AMASTER.format
automatically. AMASTER.format is a typical COBOL record definition as
shown below. Debugging lines (those marked with D in column 7) will not
be used as part of the record definition.
When you specify an
indexed file (-icobfl idx) you also specify the key offset and length
- in this example we're assuming ITEM1 is the key in the above record.
Different types of
CSV file can be created - one suitable for importing to Oracle (-csv1)
and another suitable for importing to INFORMIX (-csv2) databases.
When you import the
AMASTER.out CSV file into a databse the table definition would look like
this:
CREATE TABLE
S1.AMASTER
(ITEM1 CHAR(30),
ITEM2 INTEGER,
ITEM3 INTEGER,
ITEM4 CHAR(8),
ITEM5 INTEGER) |
Platforms Supported
- Solaris™ 2.6 Operating Environment
- Solaris™ 7 Operating Environment
- Solaris™ 8 Operating Environment
- Solaris™ 9 Operating Environment
- Solaris™ 10 Operating Environment
|
