Mainframe and Datastge

nynali · Post by **nynali** » Fri May 04, 2007 2:15 am

Hi,
I have NDM transmitted a Mainframe file in ASCII mode to UNIX and then I used this UNIX file as input to my DS job.
The problem here is I have SIGNED numeric and PACKED decimal fields in the input file.So what is the best way in DS to handle such files.

kumar_s · Post by **kumar_s** » Fri May 04, 2007 2:17 am

CFF stage support these datatypes.

nynali · Post by **nynali** » Fri May 04, 2007 5:23 am

kumar_s wrote:CFF stage support these datatypes. ...

So while NDM trasmitting the file from MF to UNIX can I transmit it in ASCII mode or do I need to change the mode to Binary??

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Fri May 04, 2007 7:08 am

That wont change the nature of the signed packed fields. The packed fields can be handled by the CFF stage. Use that.

bcarlson · Post by **bcarlson** » Fri May 04, 2007 10:54 am

nynali wrote:
kumar_s wrote:CFF stage support these datatypes. ...
So while NDM trasmitting the file from MF to UNIX can I transmit it in ASCII mode or do I need to change the mode to Binary??

You will need to transmit the file as binary. Since NDM does not know the layout of your file, it will use a 'blanket' assumption that all bytes should map from an EBCDIC character to an ASCII characters. You will end up with garbage in your numeric fields.

Brad.

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Fri May 04, 2007 10:57 am

I beg to differ. The signed decimal fields from mainframe have their last byte the "sign deciding byte". It might look like junk but its actually not. I have done this before. The file is NDM'd in ascii format so that the ftp does the right switch between mainframe and unix file formats. As for the packed fields, the ftp is not equipped to handle that and switching to binary won't change that.

bcarlson · Post by **bcarlson** » Fri May 04, 2007 11:03 am

It is the packed fields that are the biggest concern, not the signed PIC9's - yes, those are easily accommodated.

All I know is that when the files we get from the maifnrame are accidentally sent as ASCII, the data is messed up - we have very few instances of signed PIC9's, and tons of packed decimal data. So we just mandate that ALL files from the mainframe are NDM'd in binary mode to avoid any issues. DataStage does the EBCDIC to ASCII conversion just fine, and then there is no issue with the packed data.

Glad your experience has been better.

Brad.

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Fri May 04, 2007 12:52 pm

I guess we both are saying the same thing "half glass empty, half glass full"

I was referring to the signed decimal fields. As per ebcdic format files, that might require binary transfer.