Process and Convert Between Multiple File Types

Challenges:
Mainframe data types and file formats may be unsuitable for relational databases, data warehousing, and reporting environments on open systems. The converse may also be true if you still process data on, or for, a mainframe. For this reason, you may need to convert variable block or COBOL index files to CSV, or convert text to I-SAM.

Similarly, XML is a popular interchange format, but large XML files have not been practical for manipulation or conversion. LDIF on the other hand, holds large amounts of information but is not a file format that most applications can import or process.

You may need a tool that can convert between file formats and data types, or one that also manipulates, reports from, and protects data in multiple file formats -- possibly at the same time.

Solutions:
File Conversion Only
Newly available from IRI is a low-cost, file-format conversion product called NextForm. NextForm allows you to change betwen popular flat-file formats, plus legacy index formats, along with data types within the fields, and the layout of the records. NextForm job scripts can easily move you between more than 100 data and 20 file types, including MF-ISAM, CSV, LDIF, XML, Vision, Variable Blocked, and of course, sequential files (line, record and variable).

File Processing and Conversion
The SortCL tool within the CoSort package supports the simultaneous transformation (sort, join, aggregate, remap) and inter-change (both conversion and creation) of the same data and file types supported by NextForm. SortCL can also generate detail and summary reports from these file formats, and protect sensitive data the field level with a variety of data masking functions.

These capabilities are useful for mainframe and database migrations, ETL, SOA, and desktop application imports.

For details on the file types supported by NextForm and CoSort (SortCL), click on each format:

As with data type conversion, specifying one or more file conversions in a NextForm or CoSort (SortCL) job script is simply a matter of declaring the source and target file format required. So for example, to convert a CSV file to XML and/or LDIF, the job script declarations begin with:

     /INFILE=/path/filename
         /PROCESS=CSV

and on output, the declarations might be:

     /OUTFILE=/path/filename
         /PROCESS=XML
     /OUTFILE=/path/filename
         /PROCESS=LDIF

Data Type Conversion
You can also convert between field data types in both CoSort (SortCL) and NextForm. For details, see:
Solutions > Data Transformation > Type-Convert

For more details on:

See also: Blog > Data Migration