We're currently going through a FOCUS to WebFocus conversion and I was wondering if anyone has done the same and could provide me with any knowledge gained?

Main Issues:
Converting FOCUS DB to FOCUS DB on the WebFocus Reporting Server.

Converting large flat files from mainframe to windows. Is there an ASCII sort that can be accomplished with FOCUS on the mainframe?

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Cody,

With regard to the FOCUS DB's, if this is data only residing in a FOCUS DB, which needs to be fully transferred over to the Windows FOCUS DB, then the you need to 'dump' the entire database through TABLE requests and HOLD FORMAT ALPHA - then you can FTP the alpha file to the Windows Server, and run a FIXFORM Modify to rebuild the alpha file into a FOCUS DB.

FOCUS databases are binary files... so they are not directly portable between different operating systems and hardware.

As Tred says, you need to dump the data to a flat file (and if it's a file with multiple segments, you need to dump each segment with keys) and then reload the file on the new platform. There are tools to help with this in Developer Studio. It's still a somewhat manual process.

Happy Hunting!

when you do rework your focus files from the mainframe to the local server, you have an opportunity to rework the architecture to make it better, eg, optimized for retrieval rather than update, or whatever you new app needs.
Be careful about bringing DATES across. I found its safest to take dates (packed decimal, and often whacky on my mainframe) into absolute integer and then bring them down. The first file that you bring down is
-MRNOEDIT BEGIN
SET TEMPDIR = D:\IBI\APPS\MYSTUFF
-REMOTE BEGIN
TABLE FILE MYFILE
...do focus stuff
ON TABLE PCHOLD AS MYFILE FORMAT ALPHA
END
-REMOTE END
-MRNOEDIT END
FILEDEF MYFILE DISK D:\IBI\APPS\MYSTUFF\AMYFILE.FTM
TABLE FILE MYFILE
--now do your thing and change your integer dates to smart dates. so much safer.
ON TABLE HOLD AS NEWFILE FORMAT FOCUS
END
..get the idea? this is what i do, anyway. and i run this code from the server, it remote calls up to the mainframe, and its all done by the reportcaster robot. maybe it'll help.