Raymond, Don't know if this will help you with your negotiations but FTP clients typically have error correction built in. It would be a very old (or very bad) implementation of FTP if, at the very least, it did not compare checksums after the transfer and provide a completion status. The newest versions include error checking on each packet, automatic retry and restart, resume from interrupted transfer and, in the case of SFTP, SSL which provides encryption, authentication and file integrity. The FTP you are using would quite literally have to be 80-ish (or even earlier) to suffer from the problems that have been attributed to it.
-- T.Rob -----Original Message----- From: Kinzler, Raymond C [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 7:39 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: A novice question--THE SAGA CONTINUES Rao, Basically, this is what I was saying to do. My solution was a tad different in that I proposed to use something that already exists whereby an Excel file is translated into a .TXT file and the .TXT file is FTP'd to the mainframe and a GDG is created on the mainframe. When the file is catalogued, a job gets kicked off that processes the file and updates the database. A report is created along the way that is e-mailed to the user who initiated the process. The so-called 'problem' with doing it this way was (a) the application I speak of is a java package that processes about 15 or so spreadsheets and it's a pain to keep everybody that uses it up-to-date and (b) people are saying that FTP may 'lose' records while MQ guarantees 100% delivery. My counterpoint to the first 'problem' is to get rid of that java package that all the users load onto their PC and use the server that they are using to transmit the messages via MQ. There is no reason the application they use cannot simply FTP a file instead of using MQ. That would eliminate the problem of keeping individual machines up-to-date (which is virtually impossible because the machines we are talking about are outside users in may cases and 100% of the time for this specific application). As for the second 'problem,' I do not agree with the assumption that FTP 'loses' records as we DBAs run a set of processes every night that easily sends hundreds-of-thousands (and sometimes over a million) records to our data warehouse and we have never experienced any sort of data loss. Like you said, this solution is so, so, 80's-ish and people seem to want spiffy, new, flashy solutions. I am more of the type of person who wants to see a solid solution, which your suggestion is. Thanks a lot! I have gotten more out of discussions on this group than all the pages of the MQ manuals I have read. Instructions for managing your mailing list subscription are provided in the Listserv General Users Guide available at http://www.lsoft.com Archive: http://vm.akh-wien.ac.at/MQSeries.archive
