File Types Comparison : isCOBOL - Micro Focus COBOL - ACUCOBOL-GT - RM/COBOL

Question ID : 172
Created on 2011-06-10 at 4:42 PM
Author : Veryant Support [support@veryant.com]

Online URL : http://support.veryant.com/support/phpkb/question.php?ID=172

The table below shows the compatibility between isCOBOL and other COBOLs with regards to sequential, relative and indexed files.

A green background means full compatibility (no action required)

A yellow background means that a data migration is required and can be accomplished easily using the ISMIGRATE utility and in some cases with utilities provided by the other COBOL vendor.

A red background means that a conversion program must be written. Contact your Veryant representative to discuss professional services to help in these cases.

	ACUCOBOL-GT	Micro Focus	RM/COBOL
Binary Sequential with fixed-length records	Veryant COBOL compatible	Veryant COBOL compatible	Veryant COBOL compatible
Binary Sequential with variable-length records	Veryant COBOL compatible	Veryant COBOL compatible	Requires conversion. Follow the procedure outlined below
Line Sequential with fixed-length records	Veryant COBOL compatible	Veryant COBOL compatible	Veryant COBOL compatible
Line Sequential with variable-length records	Veryant COBOL compatible	Veryant COBOL compatible	Veryant COBOL compatible
Relative with fixed-length records	Veryant COBOL compatible	Veryant COBOL compatible	Veryant COBOL compatible
Relative with variable-length records (rarely used, unsupported file format)	Requires conversion Follow the procedure outlined below	Requires conversion Follow the procedure outlined below	Requires conversion Follow the procedure outlined below
Indexed with fixed-length records	Convert with ISMIGRATE	Convert with ISMIGRATE	Convert with ISMIGRATE
Indexed with fixed-length records	Convert with ISMIGRATE	Use jutil -convert to convert to JISAM format (jutil uses the Micro Focus rebuild utility)	Convert with ISMIGRATE

Procedure for converting variable-length record Binary Sequential or variable-length record Relative files to a supported Veryant format

Write a program to be compiled and executed with ACUCOBOL-GT, Micro Focus or RM/COBOL that does the following:

Read the records from the variable-length record input file (i.e. add RECORD ... DEPENDING ON depend-variable in the file's FD where depend-variable will be filled in with the record size.)
To convert a RM/COBOL variable-length record Binary Sequential file, write the records to a new fixed-length record binary sequential output file.
Use this new file as the variable-length record Binary Sequential file with Veryant COBOL.
To convert a variable-length Relative file, you have two options:
- Write the records to a new fixed-length record Relative output file using the maximum record size from the input file as the record size of the output file.
- Write the records to a new fixed-length record Binary Sequential output file but begin the output file's FD with a two byte COMP-4 item that is filled in with the record size from the input file's depend-variable.

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