arsload -keep original creation date during the ingest

[Exit16W]

zOS 1.13; View Direct 6.5.3 to CMOD 9.0 migration; roughly a million report versions.
The plan is to ##PRINT reports from View Direct to the spool with a multi-line header holding meta-data which includes the date and time the report was created.  Is there a mechanism to strip the report name, creation timestamp then delete the header during the ingest?  Also, what parm is used on arsload to store in DB2 the date and time for the report - captured in the metadata stripped from the header?


I do have available MVS download and coz utilities to move data off the spool to USS and ... if need be ... return it back to the spool (after processing a file with unix utilities).  However, I haven't found yet the way for arsload to use the date values.  Does the report specifications archive definition exit have to be used in this case? 

Are there alternatives such as leaving the data on the spool and having arsload immediately perform the ingest - which means arsload gets the metadata, stips the header and loads the report in a series of steps as it takes the data off the spool?

[ewirtz]

Hi,
we have done a similar migration (different kind of archives)  by generating generic indexer files and generate arsload jobs that do the load using the generated generic indexer files.

regards

Egon

[jeffs42885]

I lack Z/OS skills but here is how I have seen this done on MP.. not sure if this is what you are looking for but i figured i'd chime in :)

make a createdate field set it to t, and keep it hidden from the folder. that usually works

[Exit16W]

We're still working this out, but we're getting closer.  The View Direct exit for generating the banner on prints will be modified to output the create-date in a format underrstood by DB2 with an op code 03 at the beginning of the record.  After running the batch job that prints reports to the spool, we'll run arsload in batch mode or from USS to load the report into DB2.  Supposedly there's a trick to get the date from th banne and stuff it into the correct field in DB2 - which I'll supposedly see tomorrow. 
This plan of attack is cleaner using on the spool to offload from View Direct and ingest into CMOD.
My questions:  based on replies below regarding using a General Indexer, arload has the switch -X  <indexer>  with <indexer> set to G in order to use the General Indexer.  Do you use one or more of the other options to select the indexer files?
Where do you create Generic Index files?

[Greg Ira]

What format are your reports in?  The reports themselves do not contain their run/creation dates(before generating the header data)?

[Exit16W]

The reports are line data.  There are about 6K reports.  There are almost 900K versions for these 6K reports.
Our plan is to PRINT 10,000 versions at a time.  Therefore, looking inside the doc to find the date - then convert to a DB2 format date (DB2 uses dashes in date fields) sounds difficult.  Reports have the date & timestamp at different locations; I don't see how ACIF can convert date and time formats.  To me, this restriction probably eliminates the ACIF/Indexer function.

[Greg Ira]

Therefore, looking inside the doc to find the date - then convert to a DB2 format date (DB2 uses dashes in date fields) sounds difficult

Sorry, I'm a little confused. That is exactly what CMOD does, it will look inside your docs and retrieve any date time field, in almost any format, then store it internally.  Is it required that your date/times be stored in DB2 format?  CMOD uses it's own internal date/time format but it's a fairly straight forward thing to convert between CMOD & DB2 formats if need be.  Even if your date times are stored in different locations in your docs you can usually index in a way that they'll be discovered.  That would be the way I'd go. Set up correctly your only speed bump would be how fast ARSLOAD could keep up with your prints as you dump them to the spool.

[Exit16W]

My co-worker and I are coming to the conclusion we'll be able to print from View Direct to the spool with meta-data in the header (date and time the report was orinianlly created) and arsload it into CMOD.  Still working out the details.