Re: What database am I running on AIX 4.2?

Jerry Gitomer <jgitomer_at_erols.com> wrote in message news:<3C8D9522.922C099B_at_erols.com>...
> Ben Burnett wrote:
> >
> > I have inherited an application that was constructed around 20 years
> > ago to run on an IBM RS6000 machine. The machine is running AIX 4.2.
> > I'm trying to convert the application to be web based and have made a
> > lot of progress with the new app. Unfortunately I need to be able to
> > covert some of the data stored in the old system and import it to the
> > new system. The application doesn't provide a handy exporting system,
> > so I'm trying to get at the data by running queries on the underlying
> > DB. My DB experience is currently limited to MySQL on Linux. I know
> > the application isn't using a MySQL DB, but I don't know what it is
> > using.
> >
> > Is there anyone out there who can offer me some assistance in
> > identifying the DB that I'm dealing with? If anyone can help me
> > identify database systems that were used to develop applications
> > around 20 years ago on IBM RS6000 AIX machines I'd really appreciate
> > it. Or if you can think of some user groups for DB theory or AIX in
> > the Seattle area that would be helpful too. I'll be checking for
> > follow-ups on the list for the next week but direct replies would be
> > appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > - Ben
>
> I can't provide an exhaustive list of RDBMS that run on older
> versions
> of AIX (incidentally 4.2 came out sometime in 1995-1996) but
> have run
> both Informix and Oracle on AIX.
>
> When your database is running try doing a ps -ef and look at the
> output
> for a database product name.

Thanks for the reply Jerry. I tried that and didn't come up with anything that looked like the name of a DBM process. I also looked in all of the bin directories for executables that might be part of a DBM package and nothing jumped out at me.

I did however extract some strings from some of the unstripped executables that make up the application and it appears that the whole thing is written in COBOL (a language which I know nearly nothing about). Every time you need to instantiate a process in the app you have to run "cbrun xxx.gnt" where xxx.gnt is the name of a "module" of the app. I'm guessing that the .gnt files are compiled COBOL programs and that 'cbrun' is the COBOL run time? (anybody please let me know if I'm way off here)

I did some research on COBOL and it looks like all of the files in the DATA directory (paired files xxyyzz and xxyyzz.idx) are COBOL ISAM files that I read about. Does this sound right? This makes me think that there may not be an actual dbm package that the application is using to manage data but that the "dbm layer" of the application is actually coded into the application itself.

Since I don't have access to any source code to figure out what the layout of the data is within these data files it looks like I'm not going to be able to do the data conversion by accessing the data directly. Unless anyone out there knows of a way to figure out how the application "information" is stored in these data files (?) I'm going to see if I can 'scrape' the printable reports that the system generates and convert the data that way.

TIA

• Ben