Re: Packed Decimal

H. James Rader wrote: > > We have lots of data that we are trying to move with ftp from our > mainframe to a unix box and then load with dbload. The great majority of > the data fields are packed decimal. Does anyone have a down and dirty > idea of how to handle this problem? > > H. James Rader "Computers in the future may weigh no > more than 1.5 tons" - Popular Mechanics, 1949 Yeah, this is a lot of fun. 1) Packed fields are binary data. 2) With binary data you can't use your dd conv option. Data goes away. 3) Since you have to import your data in its native ebcdic format, you cant use dbload. So, you're screwed right? Not really. Option 1, write cobol programs which read in a record with packed fields and write out a record with the numeric data as strings and use dd to read the file and translate from ebcdic to ascii. This will work, but for each file you have, you have to write a separate program. ;-) Option 2, get ONLINE 7.2 There is a utility which is supposed to ship with 7.2 to support the data conversion for you. OOPS! I'm sorry, INFORMIX hasn't shipped 7.2 yet! (And they had it at last years show! ;-) Option 3. Write an esql/c for each file you need to convert. Convert each record, then slam it in to the database. This will work, but you have to write one program for every file you need to convert. Option 4. Write a program which uses a meta database and from the database you open the input file, create the table , convert the data and insert into the table. Now, I do happen to have some of the pieces ..... ;-) -Mikey [Packed / Zoned, its all COMP-3]