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Focal Point    Focal Point Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  WebFOCUS/FOCUS Forum on Focal Point     file transfer problem

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alandool
Member
posted
Hi All,

Trying to figure out a solution here. I FTPed a COBOL flatfile from our mainframe to our WebFOCUS server environment. I created a MFD to read this file. The file has 2 packed fields and in the transfer process one of them (a P4 field) appears as garbage in the ASCII file. I tried various things with the MFD to get it to read, but no luck.

I've transferred other flatfiles over with packed fields and not had this problem.

Any suggestions?
 
Posts: 16 | Registered: November 17, 2005Report This Post
susannah
Expert
posted Hide Post
EBCIDIC to ASCII
mainframes in the ibm world use the character set EBCIDIC
and your server is probably on a windows or unix platform, yes?, so its character set is ASCII.
that might be it.
the simplest way i've found is to convert to integer. from my ibm box, i use webfocus eda to convert to integer and then ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT ALPHA. Maybe you can do that in your Cobol world.



In Focus since 1979///7706m/5 ;wintel 2008/64;OAM security; Oracle db, ///MRE/BID
 
Posts: 3811 | Location: Manhattan | Registered: October 28, 2003Report This Post
Tony A
Expert
posted Hide Post
I take it that you are using binary when FTPing the file? If not then the char set will definitely cause a problem with packed decimal fields.

Try using something like textpad to view the file in hex once you have got it onto your Windows platform and then compare it to the mainframe version.

T


In FOCUS
since 1986		WebFOCUS Server 8.2.01M, thru 8.2.07 on Windows Svr 2008 R2  
WebFOCUS App Studio 8.2.06 standalone on Windows 10 
 
Posts: 5694 | Location: United Kingdom | Registered: April 08, 2004Report This Post
alandool
Member
posted Hide Post
Thanks for the replies. The situation is such that I cannot change the file before it is FTPed. Otherwise, I'd just read it in on the mainframe ... save it a file as 'format alpha' and then FTP that. I did not attempt to FTP it as binary although I've questioned if that'd work. Particularly, since the one packed field is coming thru as binary garbage. However, I have no idea what to do with a binary file in WebFOCUS. So, I should ask, if I can get it to transfer a binay, what is the process to read it into WebFOCUS?
 
Posts: 16 | Registered: November 17, 2005Report This Post
Tony A
Expert
posted Hide Post
FTPing a file in binary mode will transfer the file in one byte chunks wheras ASCII mode will transfer the data in characters. Using ASCII mode converts to and from the network standard character set. e.g. end-of-line characters are converted as necessary, based on the target operating system.

When you are FTPing data files containing packed decimal or binary values you shoul always use binary mode.

T


In FOCUS
since 1986		WebFOCUS Server 8.2.01M, thru 8.2.07 on Windows Svr 2008 R2  
WebFOCUS App Studio 8.2.06 standalone on Windows 10 
 
Posts: 5694 | Location: United Kingdom | Registered: April 08, 2004Report This Post
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