WIP
Mainframes use EBCDIC data format, which presents a challenge as most modern systems use ASCII data format. In addition, data structures of the mainframe data can be complex and are generally specified through COBOL copybook records. The complications are related to nested field, packed-decimals, arrays and REDEFINES, making code translations complex and difficult to achieve. In this how-to guide, we will provide information on how to process variable length / block or field length and block EBCDIC files.
This how-to does not cover on how to export data from mainframes. There are various ways to bring datasets from DB2 or IMS. This article assumes, you have used DBMS export or other utilities (like FTP) to bring datasets into flat files.
Before You Start
Store ECBDIC data on GCS
EBCDIC data exported from mainframes can be stored on GCS in the same way we store any other files. The files are binary and require COBOL copybook to interpret them. This presents a challenge for debugging issues with data or the system.
Access to COBOL Copybook
To process the EBCDIC data, you need a copybook that defines the structure of the data within the EBCDIC file.
More than one copybook might be required to process all the data in the file. This means records with different structures can exist within the same file.
Understanding how file(s) were exported from mainframe
Datasets (or dataset partitions) can be exported in various way from DB2 or IMS. It’s important to understand:
Whether file is text or binary,
What RECFM was specified when data was FTP or copied from mainframe,
What is the code page,
Whether the file exported from mainframe was Big-endian (IBM mainframes) or Little-endian
Note that this article only cover how to handle one copy record parsing for mainframe files.
Steps
Use the following to setup a pipeline that will process EBCDIC mainframe files.
Deploy Mainframe Plugin from Hub
Create a Pipeline
To build a pipeline that can read EBCDIC data and move the data into BigQuery or any other target system, you need to use the ‘Mainframe Record Reader’ plugin.
Select the plugin named “Mainframe Record Reader” from the left drawer with section header “Source”.
Move the Mainframe Record Reader source into the canvas.
Select the target of your choice from section with header “Sink”.
Connect the source “Mainframe Record Reader” and any sink you have selected with an edge.
It’s that simple, you have now created a simple pipeline that can read data from EBCDIC files and move them into the target. Next step is to configure the “Mainframe Record Reader”. In this article, we will not talk about configuring the target. (We are assuming that you are well versed there.)
Configure Mainframe Record Reader Plugin
The “Mainframe Record Reader” has four sections that might require setup depending on the attributes of the how file was exported and transferred. The setup is grouped into the following four sections:
General,
Record Associations,
Record Selector, and
Experimental
General
In general section, there are few important configurations that need to setup correctly. If the configuration do not match the attributes of the file being processed, processing will fail. It can generally be hard to debug due to the nature of input file.
Record Format (RECFM) - Record format specifies the type of the records in the file. Records from mainframe can be either Fixed Length or Variable Length or Variable Block. Select the right configuration depending on the knowledge of the file or group of files you are processing.
(RECFM=F) Fixed Length record file have all the records of the same size (bytes), there are EOL, CTRL-M characters indicating the end of line, they are just stream of bytes.
(RECFM=V) Variable Length record files have records that can be varying sizes. Typical different sizes might indicate that there are different copybooks. Each copybook could be associated with one record size.
(RECFM=VB) Variable Block record files have variable record length files, but the variable length records are grouped in blocks. Such files are easy to process in parallel.
Code Page - Code page defines the character encoding that associates a unique number with the set of printable and control characters. Mainframes defined different code pages for different regions. So depending on the origin or character set on mainframe, the code page should be chosen. For example any mainframe in US will code page as cp037.
Dialect - Specifies the endianness of the mainframe. IBM mainframes are defaulted as Mainframe (Big-Endian) and there Intel and Fujitsu mainframes that have different endianness.
Copybook - Specifies the COBOL copybook that contains the structure of the data files. Copybook, contains only the fields and datatypes used in the COBOL file. The plugin can directly import COBOL copybooks (.cpy files) as definitions for generating the target schema. The schema definition is based on analyzing the entire copybook including REDEFINES and OCCURS. The schema can be simple or complex. Various different types of copybooks are currently supported.
How to split copybook - You have an option
Output Schema - Specifies the whether the output schema that gets represented in the target is a flat structure or nested structure as defined in copybook. See Copybook, Field and Schema section for how the fields from copybook are translated into the target schema.
Record Associations
Record Selector
Copybook, Field Name and Schema
Flat Structure
In flat structure, OCCURS are expanded and each field has _<n> or (_<n>_<m>) suffixed at the end of the field name. E.g. if you have a field in copybook WS-FIN-AMT OCCURS 5 PIC S9(9)V99 COMP-3 then, in the output schema you will find WS-FIN-AMT_1, WS-FIN-AMT_2, WS-FIN-AMT_3, WS-FIN-AMT_4 and WS-FIN-AMT_5. In case of nested structures (like two dimensional arrays), they would be represented
Partitioning for parallel processing
Doing another task
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