accessing cobol data files from .net

  • Thread starter Thread starter EricJ
  • Start date Start date
E

EricJ

hi

i need to access cobol data files from .net, the files have no or .vix
extention (i think thats a acucobol or something like that) (/me has
completely no experience in cobol)
i heard that there should be an odbc connection for that.

Dous anyone have any ideas on how to do this??
 
Hi EricJ,

There are so many "Cobol" file.

I think you can shift it by first knowing if it is a kind of PC cobol or
that it is mainframe Cobol.

This link was very easy to find

http://www.acucorp.com/support/downloads/index.php

But you have to be sure of what Cobol it is, there was also a lot of MS,
CIS and a lot of other cobol on a PC.

There are no "Cobol" files every company uses there own format or sometimes
2 files to get one (text and index).

Cor
 
Hang on...

COBOL Data files? Are you talking about compiled data? Or like a data
file that it reads.

COBOL defines data structures at the top of the program, usually they are
sequential. There is also random access files, but still you need to know
the file format (been many years since I dealt with binary files in COBOL).

If you have the original source you can figure out the data format for a
file, whether its sequential or random, but otherwise, who/waht created it
doesn't matter.
 
as far as i can tell the acu cobol thing is some sort of universal
translator

there are defenatly 2 files a table(or wathever its called ;p)
i would have a artik file 151kb and a artik.vix 41kb
the artik file would have
junk...

«
ôô ë000258ZREGIE werk uitvoeren in regie
00000000REGIE REGIE 0
00000000000
ôô 000012ABA Abate peren, verpakken en wegen op schaal
EPSH EURO 01000032PEREN ABATE 384222 PER
and so on

the .vix is full of junk
 
that was w i was thinking
but i cant find it douwnloadable (prefferebly free)
or an other sollution thats free
 
pff, i found a acuserver thing on 1 of the servers
i'll look into that

(venting frustration a bit, its a maze here and no-one that works here exept
me knows anything about computers so they are no help. Before i started
working here everithing was done out house (if i got it right by 6 different
companies some things in cobol, some things in vb on sqlserver7, some things
in ??? dos thing, ...))

eric
 
Hi Ericj,

Mostly the structure of the not index file is not that difficult to analyse.

That is sometimes also a good way to go.

You can read it than first streaming converting it to a format you want to
use.

Copr
 
the idea is as follows
if a user selects a product in my app and the product dousnt exist i have to
look at the cobol files to c if the product exists there, i it dous get the
product info from cobol and add it to my sql server. I'm affraid converting
the cobol files all the time wont be performant, keep in mind that this
happens a lot since the systems are used together but the cobol app is still
the main application.

i need structured access to the cobol data, from what i have seen so far i
think that the acuserver (acucobol acuodbc) can do this for me, i just have
to find a way to get it working ;) but i'm working on that.

eric
 
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