I have fex that executes a stored procedure that returns 3-??? number of records. For each record there is a field that is variable length. Once I get the date from SQL, I need to write just the variable length field to an .hl7 file for an an external vendor to use.

Here is the code I am using.

SQL SQLMSS
EX dbo.usp_UpdateEMRDataAllTest '&ProcessingID';
TABLE FILE SQLOUT
PRINT EMRDemographicID SortOrder EMRRecord
ON TABLE HOLD AS HDATA FORMAT ALPHA
END

TABLE FILE HDATA
WRITE EMRRecord
BY EMRDemographicID NOPRINT
BY SortOrder NOPRINT
ON TABLE SAVE AS EMRUPLD FORMAT ALPHA
END

EMRRecord is a varchar field. There are three records for each EMRDemographicID, represented by SortOrder (1, 2, or 3). The EMRRecord for all SortOrder = 1 records is 124 characters line. The others may be as little as 20 or as large as 1250.

The problem I am having, is the first 6 digits of each line in the EMRUPLD file is the 6 digit length of EMRRecord. I need to exclude the length from the file I am created.

I have tried SQL SQLMSS SET VARCHAR OFF. This does eliminate the 6 digit length at the beginning of each line, but adds trailing spaces to the end of each line. Which will not be accepted by the external vendor.

Is there a way to print/write EMRRecord to a file without prepending the 6 digit length or adding all the trailing spaces?

Thank you,
Deana

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Deana,

A suggestion I have is to use PUTDDREC.

This function allows you to write out to a DD Name and also specify the length of the record to write.

This is an example of writing out to a file with variable length records.

Waz,

Thank you so much. This worked wonderfully well. I really appreciate your assistance.

Deana

This recent response might also help:

[CLOSED]6-digit character count on ALPHA