The non-Mainframe platforms don't have records (as a concept); they only
have byte streams;
binary files with no structure or text files with line separators (which
restricts the values in the lines to pure text).
This said: the request to transfer binary files with VB records to
distributed systems and get them back identically
can never work. So the distributed systems cannot be used as archive
medium for this use case (binary VB).
There are workarounds, of course. You could translate the binary content
to hex (for example, 2 bytes for one)
and transfer the length information separate. But then you need programs
on the mainframe side to do the conversion
in both directions. The resulting image of a binary VB line (for the
distributed system) in this case could be a simple text line,
something like this:
0012-404040f1f2f340404000000c
a record with binary content of length 12.
This could then be transferred by simple text FTP.
But that's no real transfer to the distributed system, because the data
there is not usable "as is".
I believe you should make a difference between transfers for archive
purposes only
or transfers to really use the data on the distributed system (by
migrated mainframe software, for example).
HTH, kind regards
Bernd
Am 18.01.2025 um 05:45 schrieb Andrew Rowley:
On 18/01/2025 8:42 am, Radoslaw Skorupka wrote:
Transfer between mainframe (z/OS) and distributed systems has never
been an issue or mess.
It is a mess, I submit as evidence the difficulty doing a round-trip
transfer and ending up with the same data you started with.
Fixed length records and binary transfer is OK, anything else can be a
problem.
EBCDIC<->ASCII translation can be a problem depending on the code
pages involved. Usually it works acceptably but it's hard to guarantee.
I don't think IBM provides anything that does variable length records
in binary mode correctly for a round trip. It's a while since I looked
at FTP, but last I looked the RDW option only worked for transfers
from the mainframe. You couldn't use it to write VB data back to the
mainframe.
So with or without translation, FB or VB gives you 4 scenarios, only 1
of which is truly reliable.
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