Maybe now we have some sort of confusion on acronyms;
I was talking of XLS = file extension of ExCel files,
not XSL = XML schema language ...
Kind regards
Bernd
Am 17.11.2016 um 19:13 schrieb Allan Staller:
I believe z/OS (as of 2.1? 1.13) has built in XML services.
Try here
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/features/xml/
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Bernd Oppolzer
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2016 12:08 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: COBOL parsing of "delimited files".
BTW:
at the company where I am working at the moment, we need to build "true" XLS
files at the mainframe (no CSVs) which are then transferred to a Windows network drive,
so that the clients (that is, Accounting people etc.) can fetch them from there.
The problem with mainframe generated CSVs is that ExCel will do strange things
when opening them; for example change numeric values to date values etc.,
because there is no way to specify type information in CSV.
To build the XLS Files on the mainframe and to transfer them to Windows using
FTP, we need a text format protocol, which survives text mode FTP and can be
understood by ExCel.
What we found, and what works very fine for us, is SYLK:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYmbolic_LinK_(SYLK)
So we built a library on the mainframe which generates SYLK files from our
mainframe applications and transfer them automatically (night Batch) to the
Windows network drives, for daily, weekly or monthly reports. (The mainframe
library is written in C, but that isn't very important, IMO; it could well be
COBOL or PL/1 or ASSEMBLER).
If the SYLK files have extension XLS on the network drives, ExCel will simply open them
by double-click, and the user will see no difference from "normal" ExCel files.
Of course, reading XLS which comes out of real ExCel will be much harder, if
not impossible.
Kind regards
Bernd
Am 17.11.2016 um 18:49 schrieb Paul Gilmartin:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 09:01:53 -0600, Bill Woodger wrote:
The only real problem with delimiters is when the delimiter can occur in the
data. Often a good reason for avoiding commas. Tab can be good, as long as the
data cannot contain tab (unlikely for Mainframe data).
Delimiters in the data can be "protected" by enclosing the data of that field in double-quotes. This is only a genuine
problem when the the "other end" can only process text-and-control-codes and when "any value is possible in the
data". However, it can also be an issue due to "diktat" - "this delimiter must be used, otherwise the world
will stop revolving". That's bad when the delimiter can appear in the data.
Monthly, another department publishes a .xlsx file which I wish to
parse with a script. I open it with LibreOffice and export as .html
and parse that with my script. (Ugh! The hard part is process documentation of
the manual process.) No problem with dodging delimiters. .xml might
be a better choice than .html, but I knew I was familiar with .html.
WTF!? Xcel can't export as .xml!?
--gil
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