Define an indexed file

[ejroman]

I have the task of converting some cobol indexed files to a mysql database without the benifit of the file layout of the file I am able to see the date but can't extract it cleanly in to usable fields to load into the database. any help would be great.

Thanks in advance

 

[Dimandja]

Without a file layout, you'll be doing a lot of guessing.

If these are "cobol indexed files", then you do have the COBOL programs that use them? If you do, the information you need (layouts) is in the source code.

Dimandja

 

[etom]

If you do not have the Cobol Source programs, you will have to tell us the Vendor of the Cobol compiler used to create the Indexed files, the Version of the Cobol compiler and platform. We might be able to point you to some utilities that will unload your file into text format.

etom

 

[Crox]

If it is from CA-REALIA, you can find for free the utility RCOPY which can copy the indexed-file for you into a sequential file. But... COBOL indexed-files are not self-explaining like DBF files are. The data is inside records which are all concatenated columns into one area. These columns are called fields in COBOL. These fields can be defined in several ways. There exists formats like binary, packed-decimal, things like that which can make it difficult to determine what the data means. Most of the time it is possible with utilities of the COBOL-provider to determine how big the key is and how many alternate keys there are. Do you know whom made the compiler of your COBOL-file?

 

[joepiemeloenie]

you need the source or dissassembler the executable