On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 12:19 PM, Ron Thomas <[email protected]> wrote:
> We have a requirement that looks for exporting an Excel template with data > in a tabular format from an FTP folder location to a mainframe PDS which > later needs to be accessed via COBOL for some business processing logic. > > We know that this works fine if the input Excel file is in .CSV format. > What we are looking for is, if anyone is aware of any such functionalities > where we can accept and export the Excel template as such to a PDS that is > readable by COBOL without being converted to a .CSV file? > > Thanks > Ron T > > I'm a bit unclear about what you mean by "... without being converted to a .CSV file". Do you mean that you want to directly transfer the actual .xlsx (or .xls) file into a member of a PDS without any intermediate file on the sending side? I don't know of an FTP client which can do that. Disclaimer: I am not knowledgeable about either option. And I'm a Linux person, not a Windows person. My first thought is, assuming this is on Windows, is to write a PowerShell which runs a program, say in .NET, to access the data in the Excel spreadsheet, have it create a CVS export, then ftp that. Now, depending on what you can do on the sending side, there are Python libraries which can read an Excel spreadsheet, http://www.python-excel.org/. Or you can set you the Excel spreadsheet to be an ODBC source and read it in Python using https://wiki.python.org/moin/ODBC . Also, there is an ftp package for Python as well ( https://docs.python.org/2/library/ftplib.html and https://docs.python.org/3/library/ftplib.html). This solution would require a bit of "glue" logic in Python to do. Likewise, there are similar libraries in the R language. But R is a bit more specialized and so would, IMO, take a person who does not have any knowledge of either language to learn R rather than Python. Also, there are more examples on the Web in Python to use as a starting point. I am assuming that you are on Windows. You can get Python for Windows here: https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/ There is also a version of Python for Mac and one for Linux. The R language for Windows can be gotten here: https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/ You'll also need the openxlsx (or XLConnect) and RCurl packages from: https://cran.r-project.org/. Or, like with Python, you could use ODBC in R using RODBC from the above site. Curiosity: Why no .CSV file? I am guessing that you have an end user updating some Excel spreadsheet and you don't want them to have to save it as CSV. In which case, perhaps the PowerShell approach is best. If you really don't have the disk space for the CSV, then I guess the Python or R solution would be, at least, decent. -- Schrodinger's backup: The condition of any backup is unknown until a restore is attempted. Yoda of Borg, we are. Futile, resistance is, yes. Assimilated, you will be. He's about as useful as a wax frying pan. 10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone Maranatha! <>< John McKown ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
