Re: Need to know CISAM definition to create schema

Sanjiv wrote: > I have an old application written using CISAM.Our goal is to convert > all data into Oracle tables. Unix admin is going to extract data into > ASCII files. I'm planning to use SQL*Loader. When I log into unix, all > I see is a bunch of idx files, .dat files, udat files and .h files. > Being new to all this, I have no idea how can I get CISAM file > definitions to create schema or Oracle tables? Other than looking > into each data file manually. Also we don't have Informix SE, which I > think would have helped. > > Any help will be appreciated? As you've probably guessed from the lack of response, there isn't any easy answer. Given the absence of any schema information, you're likely to have do the reverse engineering yourself. You can use bcheck to establish the row size and which parts of the row have which types (by looking at the index specifications). After that, it's down to eyeballing binary data dumps. Make sure you get both the hex and the ASCII listing. Once you know what the schema is, you can consider whether it is worth using ISEXTRACT from the IIUG Software Archive to unload the data. Beware variable length records - bcheck should warn you if they are in use. ISEXTRACT has not got the first clue about how to deal with them. -- Jonathan Leffler #include <disclaimer.h> Email: jleffler@earthlink.net, jleffler@us.ibm.com Guardian of DBD::Informix v2003.04 -- http://dbi.perl.org/