Re: importing a database from VMS/COBOL

On Sat, 29 Mar 1997 00:30:15 -0800, Maikel Alderhout <0alderhout01_at_almere.flnet.nl> wrote:

>I think you're right to do it with SQL*LOADER. You must find out which
>format (seperators or fixed format) is easy from the VMS/COBOL point if
>view. The next step is to make control files (specify here to work with
>seperators or fixed formats) for every file (or table). If you work with
>seperators you use less disk space.

I couldn't the earlier messages in this thread, since they've already scrolled off my news server, so please excuse me if I'm blathering uselessly.

Chances are very high that the files in question are not plain old text files. The VMS file system has lots of different file formats and some of them act very strangely when treated as text file. The default files created with VMS COBOL will work just fine when treated as text files and they are always in fixed format. Those are just the defaults though...many strange and wonderful (horrible?) things can be done with file formats on VMS. Be very careful. Received on Mon Mar 31 1997 - 00:00:00 CST