File Format Conversions. XML to LDIF, Vision to CSV, MF-ISAM to Record Sequential, etc.

Home » Solutions » File Interchange

File Manipulation & Mapping

Process and Convert Between Multiple File Formats

Challenges:

Mainframe data types and file formats may be unsuitable for relational databases, data warehousing, and reporting environments on open systems. The converse may also be true if you still process data on, or for, a mainframe. For this reason, you may need to convert variable block or COBOL index files to CSV, or convert text to I-SAM.

Similarly, XML is a popular interchange format, but large XML files have not been practical for manipulation or conversion. LDIF on the other hand, holds large amounts of information but is not a file format that most applications can import or process. You may also need a tool that manipulates, reports from, and converts multiple file formats -- at the same time.

Solutions:

CoSort's SortCL tool supports the simultaneous processing (sort, join, report, etc.) and inter-change (both conversion and creation) of more than 100 data and 20 file types, including MF-ISAM, CSV, LDIF, XML, Vision, Variable Blocked, and of course, sequential files (line, record and variable). These capabilities are useful for mainframe and database migrations, ETL, SOA, and desktop application imports.

For details on the file types you can process, and convert between quickly using simple CoSort SortCL jobs, click on:

CSV	LDIF	Micro Focus Variable Length	Micro Focus ISAM	Line Sequential	Record Sequential
Text	Variable Blocked	Variable Sequential	Vison	VSAM	XML

As with data type conversion, specifying one or more file conversions in a SortCL program is simply a matter of declaring the source and target file format required. So for example, to convert a CSV file to XML and/or LDIF, the job script declarations begin with:
     /INFILE=/path/filename
         /PROCESS=CSV

and on output, the declarations might be:
     /OUTFILE=/path/filename
         /PROCESS=XML
     /OUTFILE=/path/filename
         /PROCESS=LDIF

You can also convert between field data types in SortCL. See:
Solutions > Data Transformation > Type-Convert

For more details on:

Manipulating large data and files in general, see:
Solutions > Data Transformation
Generating or accelerating reports, see:
Solutions > Business Intelligence
Protecting sensitive data in files, records, and fields, see:
Solutions > Field Protection
Prototyping data safely using test files, see:
Solutions > Test Data/Files

Case Studies

Job Sample

1-800-333-SORT
1-321-777-8889

Need Test Files?
As you can see, CoSort can give you multi-format file processing and conversion. But what about creating test files in these formats? That's the job of our test data package, RowGen. Click here for more details.

CoSort (IRI, Inc.)