I am not even sure where to begin with this one. Our old accounting system used Cobol and flat files as a database. I was wondering if there was any way to import all of this into SQL and making it useful. Ideally I would like to get to a point where I could import this historical data into our ERP. The header in one of the files shows a RMKF entry and I also see some Cobol dll files on the server like Cob32api.dll
Any insight appreciated.
Directly no. Any answer will be determined on which Cobol Dialect you have (I would guess RM Cobol). Some of the Cobol compilers have there own File System. You may need to unload the files
In general while some Cobol files will be suitable for loading into a Database. Other will require programming:
Multi-Record files - probably split in to several different tables
Files with redefines
Accessing the data in the files
Loading the Files into a Database is either going to be expensive or time consuming (or both):
There are some commercial that provide access to Cobol Files (I would imagine they are expensive). Googling revealed: http://www.cobolproducts.com/datafile/data-viewer.html popup. But you will still need to analyse the files. Things like redefines can cause issues.
look at this answer Dynamically Reading COBOL Redefines with C# It looks to be similar problem, Thomas used cb2xml to generate the Cobol.
If you get the files into a Text format (see 2 above), cobolToCsv may be useful - Csv files can generally be loaded in to Databases. cobolToCsv will not handle RM-Cobol files directly.
The RecordEditor mentioned by Simon is unlikely to handle RM-Cobol binary files but should handle unloaded Text files. It may prove useful (note I am the author of the RecordEditor)
Related
I want to build file sync software. Is there any way to get exact file changes (or at least changes size) with kernel systems like I-notify or others?
EDIT:
I'm interested in the following scenario with I-notify:
When getting IN_MODIFY event on a file I want retrieve in some way changed lines of the file (some kind of a file diff format). Are there any linux kernel tools to achieve this?
Even if there were such a kernel feature, it would not work in practice. You see, most editors modify files by creating a copy, then renaming it over the original one. This way the user is assured of getting either the old contents or the new contents, never a mix between the two.
The only real option is to take snapshots of the file (at e.g. when file is closed when it was open for writing, or when the file is replaced with a new one), and compare the snapshots, to find which part was changed.
Comparing two versions of a file to see which part of it was changed is itself a difficult question, as it definitely depends on the file format. For source code, unified diffs work well, but for other types (including plain text files that are not line-oriented), it's not that simple.
Could you please refine your question? The inotify API on Linux does monitor such changes, and similar changes such as if a file was open, if a file inside a directory (or the directory itself) was moved and file deletions etc.
For more, see here:
(http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/inotify.7.html)
EDIT:
I believe I misread the question the first time around, if I did, yes such programs exist and the inotify API is the primary one existing within the Linux kernels. See the above link for a comprehensive guide on the different functions it provides.
I have a legacy system which used to run on dos. It is an ERP system for retail stores (fashion). It think it stores it's data in flat files.
I have files ending with *.KEY and other files ending with *.D00 (counting up).
I think the key files hold the key informationen and the D-Files hold some data ... there are alot D77 files...
As far as my investigation concerns this is not dfb or foxpro it could proprietary...
The company who wrote it is out of business of course so no chance for support or any hints.
When I open these files in vim or other editors I get some binary signs and some text... I tryed it in hex mode but still nothing to use...
Is there any chance I can dump out the data... in csv, ascii, xml?
I am pretty sure that this is not a standard format. Can someone point me in a direction how those data were stored back in the days and how could I make them read-able...
Any tools, tips or tricks?
// EDIT
After some time I made some progress and can now post some details which I did not now of back then and made a good answer impossible.
I asume that the dos system was written in visual cobol and that the files could be b-tree files stored in ISAM format. I assume the closet thing I could provide is, that there is a possibility that the format is C-ISAM.
How can I access / view or modify these files... C#, JAVA, ruby.... everything new age language would be cool... I am not sure if I can handle cobol... It would be great to have a converter or a viewer tool preferable opensource...
Hope this clearifies more my question =)
OpenCOBOL has a very active user group. The language itself is free and runs on Linux and Windows and perhaps MacOSX. Have a chat to the user group there; they may be able to help.
Peachtree Accounting Software used those file extensions back in 1992.
from my slapd.conf file, i see where my data is stored. when I look into that data directory i see two kinds of files, one type are .bdb files which appear to be the data files as that is the extension defined in the config file. But, I also have a bunch of log files, which appear to be binary when I try to read them in vi. I'm not sure if they are supposed to be there or if this is an oversight by someone previous to me. If I want to restore from an .ldif file, am I loosing anything by deleting all the log files? do I just need to delete the bdb files?
They are Berkeley DB files.
On Ubuntu 10.04, for example, you can install the db4.7-util package and get some information using the various db4.7_* utils (e.g. db4.7_dump or db4.7_stat). This being said, the structure of the database really depends on how OpenLDAP is coded (it's an internal format, so it's not particularly useful unless you really want to dig into it).
If you want to restore from an LDIF file, use LDAP clients or OpenLDAP commands such as ldapadd.
Which configuration management tool is the best for FPGA designs, specifically Xilinx FPGA's programmed with VHDL and C for the embedded (microblaze) software?
There isn't a "best", but configuration control solutions that work for software will be OK for FPGAs - the flow is very similar. I use Subversion at work and git at home, and wrote a little on 'why' at my blog.
In other answers, binary files keep getting mentioned - the only binary files I deal with are compilation products (equivalent to software object and executables), so I don't keep them in the version control repository, I keep a zipfile for each release/tag that I create with all the important (and irritatingly slow to reproduce) ones in.
I don't think it much matters what revision control tool you use -- anything that you would consider good in general will probably be OK here. I personally use Git for a sizable Verilog + software project, and I'm quite happy with it.
What will bite you in the ass -- no matter what version control you use -- is this: The Xilinx tools don't generally respect a clean division between "input" and "output" or between (human edited) "source" and (opaque) "binary." Many of the tools like to store some state information, like a last-run time or a hash value, in their "input" files meaning that you'll get lots of false changes. Coregen does this to its .xco files, and project navigator (the main GUI) does this to its .xise files. Also, both tools have a habit of inserting or removing lines for default-valued parameters, seemingly at random.
The biggest issue I've encountered is the work-flow with Coregen: In many cases, at least one of the following is true:
You have to manually edit the HDL files produced by Coregen.
The parameters that went into Coregen are stored somewhere other than the .xco file (usually in what looks like an output file).
You have to copy-and-paste the output from Coregen into your top-level design.
This means that there is no single logical source/master location for your input to the core-generating process. So even if you have the .xco file under version control, there's no expectation that the design you're running corresponds to it. If you re-generate "the same" core from its nominal inputs, you probably won't get the right outputs. And don't even think about merging.
I suggest CM tools that support version labeling and binary files. Most Software CM applications are fine with ASCII text files. They may just store a "difference" file rather than the entire file for updates.
My recommendations: PVCS, ClearCase and Subversion. DO NOT USE Microsoft SourceSafe. I don't like it because it only supports one label per revision.
I've seen Perforce and Subversion used in a couple of FPGA-intensive companies.
We use Perforce, and its great. You can have your code that lives in Linux-land checked in side-by-side with your Specs and Docs that live in Windows-land. And you get branching, labels, etc.
I've seen everything from Clearcase to RCS used, and it is really all okay for this kind of thing. The important thing is to get a good set of check-in policies established for your group, and make sure they stick to it.
And have automated nightly regressions. That way, when someone breaks the rules, they can be identified and publicly shamed.
I have personally used Perforce, Subverion, git and ClearCase for FPGA projects. Since VHDL and C are just text files, any works fine. However be sure to capture the other project and contraint files and any libraries you use.
Also think about what to do with the outputs, e.g. log file and bitstreams. Both tend to be big and the bitstreams are binaries.
Previously I used Subversion but have switched to git two years ago. Git handles FPGA design files just as well as it handles every other text and binary file. Git is all you need for version controlling your files and artifacts.
For building the designs, I recommend just using a single ISE project called "ise" (living in a subdirectory called "ise/"). You can take a look at my (very modest) FPGA open-source project on github for the file layout. I don't bother storing the ISE files at all since they are easy to regenerate. The only things I save are the Verilog files and some ISIM waveform config files. In other projects that use coregen I save the coregen.cgp project file and all of the *.xco scripts for regenerating cores. Then I use a Makefile for actually running coregen on the *.xco files. There are a few other Xilinx-specific files you should version control too: *.ucf, *.coe, *.xcf, etc.
I experimented with using Makefiles and the Xilinx command-line tools but found that ISE did a much better job tracking dependencies and calling the tools with the right arguments. Just don't make the mistake of trying to version control your ise/ project files or you will go mad. Xilinx has something like 300 different file types which change every release. If you want to save a file, you can try the ISE project file itself with a .xise extension. Anything that is hard to recreate, like the golden bitfile that you know works and took 6 hours to build, you might want to copy that and configuration manage it explicitly.
I've an application, that uses encrypted (txt) files to store data. After investigating the decompiled assembly I concluded that it's a file of some DBMS. So how can find out which DBMS is this application using to store it's data, so that I can attach that file to the correct DBMS.
This is little application and there is no license problem. I can just ask the owner to gimme the data, but just curious to solve this myself.
MORE INFO:
Platform is Windows, and after trying couple of decompilers I concluded that it WAS written in Visual C++. However I couldn't fully decompile this exe, otherwise I just could find out it from the source code.
A couple ideas.
If opening the file in a HEX editor doesn't give you any information (like a magic identifier at the start of the file, which you can pop into google, then:
Use the depends tool from microsoft to grab a list of the DLLs being loaded by the application. Chances are whatever DBMS it's using is contained in an external library.
If the first two suggestions yield nothing, load the executable into IDA pro freeware and have a look at the code which is creating these files.