ASSIGN entries, with any associated record definitions, concerning the RM/COBOL data file you want to convert. You must convert all your data files, so that the.
In the course of legacy platform and/or application migration, COBOL users often need to convert their binary and index files into a human-readable, ASCII-numeric target. One of these older formats is the ACUCOBOL Vision file, which we discussed previously in. In order to convert and make use of those files, you need a program or utility that can read and process them, and metadata that will define your data source and target layouts. There are two programs that are capable of natively processing COBOL Vision files:.: The “” of this program is primarily used to convert from one file type to another, and/or convert from one data type to another. NextForm also has report formatting features, and can be used to federate and replicate data.: The “” program within CoSort does all that NextForm does, plus many other functions, including: data transformations (sort, join, aggregate, pivot, etc.) and data masking (encrypt, hash, pseudonymize, etc.). Note that both NextForm and CoSort are supported in the, a free graphical integrated development environment (IDE), built on Eclipse.™ The workbench automates the discovery and definition of metadata for, and the creation and execution of, IRI jobs. You will also need to have access to either the COBOL copybook or the Identification Section of the XFD file associated with the Vision file.
If you have neither, life will be much harder, though there is the possibility of guessing what’s inside after a ‘blind’ conversion. Both the XFD and the COBOL copybook contain the metadata for the data file, including:. record size. column positions or offset for the fields. byte size of the fields.
data type of the fields. how many times a particular group of definitions occur.
format, if any fields are one of the various numerics. field names Let’s assume you have a Vision file that is accompanied by the following copybook: FD CLIENT-PROCEDURE-FILE.01 FILLER PIC X(186). 01 CLIENT-RECORD. 05 PROCEDURE-KEY. 10 PROCEDURE-CODE PIC X(60).
05 PROCEDURE-DATA. 10 CATEGOTY PIC X(5).
10 PROCEDURE PIC X(10). 10 PROCEDURE-DESC OCCURS 3 TIMES.
15 PROCEDURE-PART PIC X(30). 15 PROCEDURE-CHARGE PIC S9(9)V9(4). The field section of an XFD file for the same Vision file might (and there are different versions) contain: 6,16,00186,+00,000,999,CLIENT-RECORD 0,16,00060,+00,000,999,PROCEDURE-KEY 0,16,00060,+00,000,000,PROCEDURE-CODE 6,16,00126,+00,000,999,PROCEDURE-DATA 5,16,00005,+00,000,000,CATEGORY 0,16,00010,+00,000,000,PROCEDURE 3,00037,START-OCCURS 7,16,00030,+00,000,999,PROCEDURE-DESC 0,16,00020,+00,000,000,PROCEDURE-PART 7,09,00014,-02,000,000,PROCEDURE-CHARGE 90002,END-OCCURS Lines that are actual field definitions have 000 in the 7th column. The first column has the start position, the second has the byte size, the third has the data type, and the last column has the field name. Following is a list of the more common codes for the data types: 0 Numeric edited 1 Unsigned numeric 2 Signed numeric (trailing separate) 3 Signed numeric (training combined) 4 Signed numeric (leading separate) 5 Signed numeric (leading combined) 6 Signed computational 7 Unsigned computational 8 Positive packed-decimal 9 Signed packed-decimal 10 Computational-6 16 Alphanumeric Either the copybook or the XFD can be used to translate the legacy file dictionary to the Data Definition File (.ddf) used by all IRI software. For copybooks, IRI also has a standalone conversion utility, called ‘‘ to create DDF repositories with the same information in IRI’s metadata syntax. This tool runs in the IRI Workbench as well to produce the metadata for your NextForm or CoSort SortCL jobs.
I have a COBOL data file without a file extension. I need to convert it to any type a modern data file such as mentioned above.
I can open the file with Notepad on Windows. What you've got here is not really a COBOL data file per se. It's a flat data file without a structure imposed on it. It certainly could be written by a COBOL program. What you need to make sense of this would be a copybook that defines what the various data fields even are.
While I can't be sure, if I had to hazard a guess I'd say that this is header material 0 12182641 ֽ ֽ A ֵ and then you have multiple records, each one starting at @. This would likely be one record: @ֽB32GE93DO 2PECALR 1MF000232Y A10000 Now what you need is the structure.
Do you have access to the COBOL source code? Without it (or else a copy of the copybook) I'm afraid there's probably no way to determine what this data is supposed to signify. If you have to do this over and over or the file is very long, there are two things you can choose from Write a program in cobol that will add commas between the fields and create a new file. You can then open that file as a csv in Excel. OR Write an excel macro.
In one sheet provide the structure i.e. The type of the field in one column and the length in another column. The macro will read the structure of the file and split the text in multiple columns based on their length. You can look at for some idea on how to write the macro.