IRI, The CoSort Company

IRI delivers variable block file, and other file, format conversion functions (along with data type conversion) in two packages. Choose between them based on the level of need:

Block File Conversion Only
Newly available from IRI is a low-cost, data migration product called NextForm. NextForm allows you to convert large files with a blocking factor into other file formats (like CSV, LDIF, COBOL, text, etc.). Contact IRI, however, if you need to convert from another file format into a blocked format, as NextForm does not currently do this.

NextForm also converts the data types in your files so you can go from EBCDIC to ASCII, packed to numeric, and so on. In addition, you can convert between fixed and variable length files.

Note that NextForm file definitions also work in SortCL so that you can re-use your metadata if you someday want to upgrade to CoSort's fast transformation, custom reporting, and/or data-centric protection functions for your files.

Block File Processing & Conversion
The CoSort package's SortCL tool features the same data conversion options available in NextForm, as well as blocked file manipulation and reporting functionality.

With SortCL, you can peform and combine blocked file:

• filtering (select, scrub, links to DQ tools)
• transformation (sort, join, aggregate, calc, etc.)
• conversion (data-type and file-format migrations)
• presentation (batch, summary, and delta reports)
• protection (field encryption, de-ID, masking)

All of these actions - one or more at a time - are available for mainframe application and data migrations involving a mix of blocked files and CSV, XML, LDIF, I-SAM, Sequential, Micro Focus Variable Length, ACUCOBOL Vision, text and other large flat files.