working the Mainframe data

go4it · Post by **go4it** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 10:59 am

Hi All,

Could you'll please advice on how to convert the Mainframe data (provided as flat files having either a QSAM/VSAM structures), it contains a mixture of Assembler data and Cobol data ? The Definition files is ebcidic and I have converted the structure into a flat file but I am unable to load them

Any advice would help.

Thanks

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 11:29 am

What is assembler data? Were these files flattened on the host or did you somehow receive binary images of the VSAM/QSAM structures? Do you have the COBOL copybooks for the data and have you looked at the files with a binary tool and tried to compare what you see with what the COBOL definitions are?

michaeld · Post by **michaeld** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:20 pm

I don't think you can read VSAM files directly in PX (I think DataStage MVS has this functionalty). Once you convert them to flat data sets (mainframe) or files then you can treat them the same as any other EBCDIC file. They will most likely be variable block datasets to you'll need to flatten them out using DFSORT or FILE-AID or some other mainframe utility OR use the server job complex file stage to read variable block files that only rely on one field to determine record type.

Aruna Gutti · Post by **Aruna Gutti** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 2:33 pm

As you are working on version 8, you can use Complex Flat File Stage to read VSAM data from Mainframe.

There should be couple of posts ( I created one of those ) that explain how to do this.

If you have federation server you can directly connect to VSAM files from DataStage.

Otherwise you have to convert your VSAM file as suggested by michaeld into a flat file and copy it in a binary mode to your DataStage server and use CFF stage to format the Data in a parallel job.