FTP ASCII From MII To Mainframe?

[Former Member]

Folks,

I'm trying to FTP a text file from our MII Server (v12.0.5) to our Mainframe. The file arrives but with two problems:

1) The file appears to be binary instead of Ascii.

2) The file name is being preceeded with the FTP userID.

I don't see any configuration option on the FTP Output action to change the file type from binary to Ascii nor any switch or ability to force the file name with no preceeding user name. Also no hits from any previous threads here.

Any ideas? What other (simple) options do I have for FTPing an Ascii text file from my MII server to a mainframe?

Thanks in advance,

Randy Lintz

Foster Farms

[Former Member]

Randy,

Mainframes commonly use EBCDIC encoding as default. This can give you problems when FTP'ing a file. You should talk with your mainframe operations to see if there are settings that can be configured for the mainframe account to which you are using. This also applies to the user id issue you are having. In the past, I have used WS_FTP client software to FTP a fixed column width file from a PC to the mainframe. Doing this usually confused the mainframe file name as my extension was redundant (i.e. TD.YZ.TD.YZ.PDS(MRPB5000) when it should have been TD.YZ.PDS(MRPB5000)). This was caused by an incorrect default folder path on my client FTP software. You may also want to verify with operations if your FTP file will or should be a gen'd data set. If MII can't handle the (+1) as part of the file name, you may need to send the flat file and then have IEBGENER (or another utility) in a mainframe job take the file and gen it.

Since there is no encoding parameter in the FTP action block, another solution would be to FTP the file to a server which can handle the conversion. Then, send the file from that server to the mainframe. Its an extra step but you may have limited options at that point.

Regards,

Kevin

Edited by: Kevin Yurasits on Mar 12, 2009 2:32 PM

[Former Member]

Kevin,

Thanks for the info. We're going to go with a windows script to poll for and FTP the file requiring to be sent.

Randy