More Linux CoSORT Releases

CoSORT v8.2.2 is now available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 3.0AS for the IBM zSeries mainframe, plus IBM's i, and pSeries eServers. CoSORT v8.2.2 is also running on RHEL4.0AS and below on Intel Xeon (IBM x, etc.) and Itanium processors.

CoSORT was also recently 'YES' Certified by Novell on SLES9 and ported to FreeBSD 5.3 and Solaris 10 for x86. CoSORT was also re-certified "ServerProven" by IBM (for AIX), and runs on IBM's POWER architecture levels 3 through 5.

In response to periodic requests for product training (on CoSORT and SortCL in particular), IRI can arrange a webinar for training your company in the more complex aspects of SortCL data manipulation, report generation, metadata conversion and management, and large sort system tuning.

FACT and RowGen introductions and training sessions are also available for these newer IRI products. 

Please contact your IRI agent if you would like to arrange live, internet-based training for your company or clientele.

• CoSORT solutions serve data warehouse (ETL) architects, very large database (VLDB) administrators, mainframe sort migrators, and developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) building faster sorting and data transformation into their applications.
  
• CoSORT delivers the IT industry's fastest UNIX sort engine and one of its most powerful flat-file manipulation and reporting programs: SortCL, which combines: row filtering and conditional selection, sort/merge and joins, drill-down aggregation and cross-row calculation, conversion and generation of more than 100 data types, database sequencing, and multi-target, multi-level output reformatting for reports, hand-offs, and DB load utilities.
  
• Other special features include: coroutine sort architecture; fully tunable and scalable parallel sort performance on all multi-CPU UNIX and Windows servers; cross-calculation on aggregated values and aggregation on cross-calculated values, cross-table joins (matching) integrated with data conversion and expression logic; multinational date and timestamp support; a cross-platform Java GUI; and, e-commerce reporting via CSV/CLF and IP Address manipulation, plus ELF input and HTML output.
  
• CoSORT also has plug-n-play replacements or parameter converters for sorting in: ACUCOBOL-GT, Amdocs Ensemble (telecom billing) Ascential DataStage; Informatica PowerCenter and PowerMart; Cincom Supra; IBM's DB2 loader and MVS/VSE sorts; MF COBOL Workbench, Net and Server Express; SAS System; Software AG Natural; Sun MRP, and, UNIX SVR4 (/bin/sort).
  
• IRI has begun to offer other data manipulation and management solutions like: FACT for fast unloads from Oracle; netCONVERT for mainframe tape data conversion and reformatting;  x-PRESS for fast, and secure data compression and decompression; RowGen for custom-formatted random file generation; Logon for controlling and auditing access to UNIX systems; and Permitas for licensing and activating software applications.
  
• The CoSORT Journal is a quarterly Email newsletter designed to keep subscribers up-to-date on salient news and events at IRI, Inc. Past editions are archived here.
  

Copyright © 2005 Innovative Routines International (IRI), Inc. 2194 Highway A1A, Suite 303, Melbourne, FL 32937-4932. All rights reserved in the USA and in other jurisdictions.

CoSORT, SortCL, Permitas, and Rowgen are trademarks of IRI. FACT is a trademark of CoSORT Korea, Ltd. Other product or brand names mentioned herein may be (registered) trademarks or copyrights of their respective owners.

To remove or add an Email address in future CoSORT Journal mailings, please email news@iri.com. To contact an IRI agent, click here, call 1-800-333-SORT, or email info@iri.com. 

Over-define the /INFILE Fields in SortCL

Although CoSORT's MF COBOL Copybook-to-Data Definition File (cob2ddf) utility does not translate REDEFINE or OCCURS USING clauses to SortCL field layouts, you can still usually handle redefines in SortCL. That is because you can (manually) specify different field names with the same or overlapping layouts more than once in the /INFILE phase.

For more information on using SortCL to manipulate files with redefines or hierarchical layouts, contact an IRI engineer directly via support@iri.com.

New Data Types You Can Generate

In addition to the more than 100 data types you can randomly generate in RowGen, you can randomly produce data in several new ASCII sub-data-types:

alpha              Only alphabetic characters
alpha_digit Alphanumeric characters. 
ASCII       All ASCII characters, printable and
          non-printable, with the exception of a binary 0,
          from hexadecimal 01 to 7F.
digit       Only digits (0 through 9).
lower       Lower-case alphabetic characters.
printable   All printable ASCII characters, 
           represented by hex 20 to 7E in ASCII
space              Only blank or tab characters.
upper              Upper-case alphabetic characters.

Note that RowGen also supports the generation of EBCDIC equivalents for all of the above types; for example, EBCDIC_alpha, EBCDIC_alpha_digit, etc. 

Unloading Very Large Tables?

When table unloads are too large to store on one disk or to reload into a single Oracle table, FACT can 'split' the extract file into smaller components, where you specify the maximum byte size (and destination, if desired) for each part of the extract. 

For example, you can include this entry in your FACT .ini file: SPLIT=100MB where a flat-file extract of 300MB would be split into three files of 100MB each:
extract_1.dat (first 1/3 of extracted rows)
extract_2.dat (second 1/3)
extract_3.dat (final 1/3)*.

* If there are some additional rows that do not total a full 100MB in this case, a final smaller extract file, extract_4.dat, would be produced.

FACT can also write SPLIT file components to separate path or disk locations where there is more storage space. For example, you might specify:

SPLITPATH=/home/u1/FACT 
   [for the destination path of extract_1.dat]
SPLITPATH=/dev/u1/FACT   (extract_2.dat)
SPLITPATH=/misc/u1/FACT (extract_3.dat) 

Note that the split components are exported to the paths in the order presented in the .ini file.