Dave, This is a data migration problem, something very common in mainframe migration/modernization projects. There are ETL tools (Extract-Transform-Load) to help with doing such projects.
But first you need to establish the goal of migrating the data. From what you describe, I could see two possible goals: (1) Get the data off the mainframe and onto cheap commodity storage so that it can be accessed easily using non-mainframe tools (SQL queries, etc.), OR (2) Get the data off the mainframe and onto cheap storage. If ever needed in the future it could be recalled back to the mainframe for access. Option (1) is a lot more work. I will explain in a separate note what I did at another client a few years back to preserve a bunch of old mainframe datasets for SQL access. Option (2) is pretty easy. You just write something to dump your records as external hexadecimal, FTP the files to a Windows/Linux server, and then burn to DVD (or move to a cheap disk array). You then build some programs to reverse the process when needed to bring back data to the mainframe. John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
