Mainframe Cobol File extraction Using Ascential

[renjithkk]

I am using Acential server version 6.0.1. We have the Datastage server and the parallel extender. We want to extract the data from some mainframe Cobol files. The Ascential server is in Unix. Can anybody tell me which is the best way to extract data from these Mainframe cobol files? Is there a Stage using which I can do this? If yes is this in Server or in Parallel? Else do I need to have an extraction program to extract data and then FTP to Unix server and use it?

Please advise.

Thanks.

[jseclen]

Hi,

In this case you have to use job mainframe to extract data from mainframe environment, so, you have to convert the binary data to character type and transfer it using ftp or connect to unix environment.

When you have the data in Unix you can use the job server (unix).

I hope this help.

[renjithkk]

Hi,

In this case you have to use job mainframe to extract data from mainframe environment, so, you have to convert the binary data to character type and transfer it using ftp or connect to unix environment.

When you have the data in Unix you can use the job server (unix).

I hope this help.

Hi,

By Job Mainframe do you mean DataStage XE/390 jobs? Unfotunately this product is not installed. So if I don't have Mainframe jobs, can't I directly use Ascential to do the cobol file extraction? Atleast can I ftp the cobol file as is to unix and use Ascential server(or Parlalel) job to do the loading? (If this is not possible then I need to have an extraction program (may be in cobol) to extract in flat file and ftp to unix and load using ascential.

Is there a stage available in server job or parallel job?

Thanks.

[vmcburney]

DataStage on Unix should be able to read these files as complex flat files using the CFF stage. You will need to ftp the cobol definition file and data files onto your DataStage server, you can then use the Import Table Definitions - COBOL File Definitions to create a metadata definition of the file by pointing it at the cobol definition file.

The CFF stage is documented in the plugin documentation guide. It contains options for reading cobol files as text or binary and for filtering the record types.

[inter5566]

Hi,

You can also use the ftp stage to perform a binary transfer into a transform stage where you can use the ascii routine and the other data conversion routines to handle any binary or packed ebcdic data. The trick to using the ftp is in the length and display values in the columns tab; the length and display should be the same as the actual byte length of the stored data. Just be aware that the count of the pic clause is not always the same as the byte size of storage, ie packed data as a pic 9(9) is 5 bytes long.

sorry for any confussion, but you can do this without DS390

HTH
Steve