Unload the file from the mainframe VSAM into a sequential file.
Be careful about EBCDIC/ASCII field translation and COMP/COMP-3 data fields.
Copy the sequential file to where you have GnuCOBOL.
Then you need to have a program (or some utility) that will copy the sequential data file into the ISAM file handler of choice on the target system
VB-ISAM works fine... Make sure you have the 2.1.1 version or later.
Install or build VB-ISAM and then rebuild the GnuCOBOL compiler to use that.
On Fri, May 4, 2018 at 11:25 AM, LM <lmemsm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Wanted to thank everyone who wrote back with regards to my inquiry for
their help. My colleague and I were able to copy a sample batch
program and its data file off the mainframe to a PC. We're now
attempting to get the sample program to run. It builds fine with GNU
Cobol. However, it gives an error when it tries to access the data
file as is. I'm investigating using vbisam with GNU Cobol to attempt
to access the data. Would appreciate some opinions.
Is it easier to convert flat files to ISAM files and access that way
or to just load the information into a relational database and use
embedded SQL? Any recommendations? Saw a few options for ODBC/SQL
with GNU Cobol including:
http://www.kiska.net/opencobol/esql/index.html
https://sourceforge.net/p/open-cobol/discussion/contrib/ thread/3d4f1141/
https://github.com/opensourcecobol/Open-COBOL- ESQL
Are there preferences as to which embedded SQL version/code to use?
Also saw some different versions of vbisam. I'm currently using the
version at https://sourceforge.net/projects/vbisam/files/vbisam2/ , but
I started comparing different versions and patches mentioned (
https://sourceforge.net/p/vbisam/discussion/330149/ )thread/c2662763/
and to combine some of the patch sets. Has anyone already done that?
Is there are preferred version of vbisam to work with? I rebuilt GNU
Cobol using version 3.0-rc1 and made sure curses and vbisam support
were enabled.
Does anyone have some simple examples of GNU Cobol programs that do
ISAM access (using vbisam)? I'd like to test that I've built GNU
Cobol with vbisam support properly before I go on to the next step.
Any pointers to sample programs that work with the GNU Cobol compiler
would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Laura
Cheers
Ron Norman
