Innovative Routines International (IRI), Inc., The CoSort Company

Free Converters Leverage Your File Definitions

CoSort Version 9 and other IRI software products ship with tools to translate your existing file layout metdata. In CoSort's case, the tools also convert legacy sort program metadata.

With these included utilities, you can re-use your existing data definitions with IRI software. IRI has also partnered with a leading metadata conversion company (MITI) to automatically create the necessary file layouts from major BI, ETL and relational data tools.

About IRI Product Metadata

The explicit text-based metadata of CoSort's SortCL, RowGen, FieldShield, and NextForm is straightforward and self-documenting -- making it easy to learn, use, and audit. You can store your files' field (column) layouts in reusable Data Definition File (.ddf) repositories. You can paste or reference these definitions in your job scripts. They all use the same "/FIELD=" statements to identify column:

• Names or Aliases
• Sizes or Ranges
• Positions or Delimiters
• Data Types
• Conditions and Expressions
• Security and Other Functions

Third-Party Metadata

File layout translators included in the CoSort package and other IRI tools can migrate your existing field/column descriptions into data definition file (.ddf) repositories. These tools can reduce or eliminate the overhead associated with migrating metadata to a .ddf from:

• COBOL copybooks (cob2ddf)
• comma-separated values (csv2ddf)
• W3C extended log format (elf2ddf)
• Oracle SQL*Loader control files (ctl2ddf)
• LDIF files (ldif2ddf)
• XML files (xml2ddf)

Therefore, if you already have file layouts defined in the above applications, you can automatically reproduce that metadata for use in large SortCL manipulation jobs, in RowGen for generating safe test data in those same file formats, in FieldShield for protecting sensitive fields in these file types, and NextForm for converting them.

If your file layouts exist in other formats (including CWM, DSX, UML, XMI and XML), consider that Meta Integration Technology, Inc. (MITI)'s Meta Integration Model Bridge (MIMB) will convert these repositories into IRI's .ddf syntax as well!

Whether you use a metadata converter that IRI, MITI, a consultant, or your own company develops, the benefit is clear -- not having to re-create metadata you already own.

Sort Program Metadata

You can also access free mvs2scl, vse2scl, and ssu2scl utilities to convert your legacy sort parms. For many jobs, the automatic result can be an equivalent CoSort SortCL job specification file containing the input and output field layouts. Where automation falls short, manual conversion is not difficult.

Another CoSort package utility -- called sorti2scl -- converts CoSort's sort interactive (SortI) program job specifications into their SortCL job equivalents.

Meta Integration Technology, Inc. (MITI) also provides links to the data definnition file (.ddf ) format common to all IRI tools, including CoSort's SortCL and RowGen. MITI's Meta Integration Model Bridge (MIMB) software can create IRI-too-ready .ddf repositories from the metadata used in these other major 3rd-party applications

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