Question

Creating mainframe files (EBCDIC?) using Java

Asked by: NHBFighter

I have been given the task of recreating a number of mainframe files that are currently created by Cobol and stored in EBCDIC format.  We are re-designing a legacy system and the system creates several files that are pushed out to other systems which are not changing, so the file format needs to remain the same as it is today.

I have been given some documentation that describes the file layout in a manner such as:
 field1 PIC X(4)
 field2 PIC S9(03)V99 COMP-3.
 field3 PIC S9(07) COMP-3.
 field4 PIC S9(4)V9

  I have a general idea what these formats mean, X(4) represents a 4 character string (abcd) where each character is represented has a single byte. S9(07) represents a 7 digit signed integer (1254782) which is represented by 4 bytes. And S9(4)V9 is a decimal number with one digit after the decimal (1234.5). I know that COMP-3 means that its a packed field (the details of what that really means eludes me a bit).

I need to able to construct these files using Java running on a Unix machine can any one offer me some guidance on the best way to approach it.

Thanks
David

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Asked On
2007-09-12 at 14:14:21ID22824692
Tags

java

,

ebcdic

,

mainframe

,

file

Topics

Java Programming Language

,

Main-Frame Programming Languages

,

COBOL Programming Language

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: prakash_parvathPosted on 2007-09-12 at 23:19:11ID: 19881927

Hi
As you have to create files which are not ASCII and which are EBCDIC
you need to supply the encoding information along with the I/O Streams

ex : FileInputStream fin = new FileInputStream(filename);
      Reader inReader = new BufferReader(new InputStreamReader(fin, "8859_1"));
       
       byte [] myBytes = myString.getBytes("8859_1");

 ** where "8859_1" represents the ISO8859_1 encoding which is  IBM-1047 (EBCDIC) encoding.

 

by: NHBFighterPosted on 2007-09-13 at 07:32:22ID: 19883964

Thanks Prakash

So that should work for character encodings for the strings but how would I go about adding the packed fields like  PIC S9(03)V99 COMP-3?  

David

 

by: NHBFighterPosted on 2007-09-13 at 07:52:09ID: 19884164

So I'm trying to encode the following string 0100715052T0102091998 into the EBCDIC format with this type of code:
   FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(...);
   String myString = "0100715052T0102091998";
   byte [] myBytes = myString.getBytes("8859-1");
   fos.write(myBytes);
   fos.flush();fos.close();

I also tried it with  myString.getBytes("ISO-8859-1");

But I guess my install doesn't have that charset encoding or something because ASCII is what is getting written to the file. (Its the same has when I don't specify an encoding, myString.getBytes();

Thanks

 

by: PropertyTaxAnalystsPosted on 2007-10-23 at 11:42:57ID: 20133355

I don't think this is the solution that you are looking for, but it may work if you have to go to plan "B" or an alternate solution.

Assuming your files were created in an IBM environment, you might want to look into one of the utility programs available with the system. The program "IEBGENER" can process files and also reformat the contents. Using this approach, you could convert the Packed fields to numeric Character fields, and also separate each field with a delimiter such as a comma.

I realize this is not necessarly the cleanest way of solving the problem, but I believe it is do-able.
Good luck

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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