Producing PC files with Spectrum Writer is easy because you use the same
control statements that you use to produce reports. You simply add an OPTIONS
statement that causes the "report" to be specially formatted as a PC file.
bit fields
As a mainframe report writer, Spectrum Writer naturally can process these kinds
of data. The PC option tells Spectrum Writer to reformat your mainframe data
into the kind of character data that PC programs can process. Spectrum Writer
also delimits your output file, putting quotation marks around character strings,
and separating each field with a comma. Files in this standard format (called
"delimited ASCII") can be imported into virtually all popular PC programs.
How to Create a PC File in 5 Minutes
You remember that you can produce a Spectrum Writer report with just two
statements. The INPUT statement identifies the input file to use. And the COLUMNS
statement specifies the columns desired in the output.
To create a PC file with Spectrum Writer, we simply add a third statement:
OPTIONS: PC
The OPTIONS statement tells Spectrum Writer that we want the output formatted as
a PC file.
Figure 4 illustrates this. The top box in this Figure shows our three control
statements. Based on these statements, Spectrum Writer creates a PC file
containing the requested data in delimited ASCII format.
The PC screen shows the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet obtained by importing Spectrum
Writer's PC file. The spreadsheet contains the mainframe data we requested,
properly laid out into rows and columns. There are even column headings for
each column. (Once imported into Lotus, we also used its graphing facility to
graph the AMOUNT and TAX columns.)
That's all there is to creating custom PC files with Spectrum Writer. With three
simple statements we did all of the data selection and reformatting that would
otherwise have taken an entire COBOL program to do.
Translating the PC File to ASCII
In the preceding example, the PC file that Spectrum Writer created was an EBCDIC file. That makes it easy to work with on the mainframe. (For example, you can browse it with ISPF to verify the contents and format.) So how was Lotus 1-2-3 able to use this EBCDIC file? The file transfer program translated it to ASCII during the download.
When downloading PC files, look for a "Translate ASCII" or similar option and make sure it is selected. Also, select the "CRLF" option. It adds ASCII carriage-return/line-feed bytes to the end of each record, which most PC programs expect.
This is a very convenient way to convert your EBCDIC mainframe data to ASCII. While on the mainframe, you can use mainframe tools to examine it. Then convert the file to ASCII as you transfer it to your PC. There you can use standard PC tools to work with it.
You may wonder why you couldn’t just translate the whole, raw mainframe data file this same way. The answer is that you could do that, as long as the mainframe file doesn't contain any binary fields. (The binary fields would also get "translated" during the transfer, resulting in garbage appearing in those fields on your PC.) If the mainframe file has any binary fields (such as packed, binary integer or bit fields) then you need Spectrum Writer to first reformat the data into a PC file. All of the binary fields will be expanded into EBCDIC character fields. The resulting PC file will be pure EBCDIC — no binary data in it. Now it’s safe to download it to your PC using the ASCII translation option.
Creating Native ASCII Files on the Mainframe
If you prefer, Spectrum Writer can also produce true ASCII files directly on the mainframe. This is useful if you want to build an output record that contains some ASCII character data along with some binary data. Such mixed records can’t simply be translated as a whole.
Figure 4.1 shows an example of creating a native ASCII file with Spectrum Writer. In this example, we want to produce an output file containing the same data as in Figure 4. However, this time we want fixed-format records rather than a comma-delimited file. We want the character fields to be in ASCII. However, we want the AMOUNT and TAX fields to be 4-byte binary integer fields in the output file.
The MAINFRAME option in Figure 4.1 tells Spectrum Writer that we are producing a mainframe-type file (not a comma-delimited PC file). This option sets the inter-column spacing to zero bytes. It also suppresses titles, column headings and totals.
On the COLUMNS statement, we specify the ASCII option for the fields that we want to be written in ASCII character format. For the SALES-DATE and SALES-TIME fields, we also specified the date and time formats that we wanted for the output file. All of these fields will now be written in ASCII rather than EBCDIC. The AMOUNT and TAX fields will be written as 4-byte binary integer fields.
The lower box in Figure 4.1 shows some of the resulting records (in hex format). That’s all there is to writing ASCII files directly on your mainframe with Spectrum Writer.
When downloading ASCII files like this one to your PC, remember to perform a binary download. That is, turn off the ASCII translation option. However, you may still want to use the "CRLF" option (depending on how you will use the file on the PC). This option adds carriage-return/line-feed bytes to the end of each downloaded record.
