Parser for Micro Focus Cobol - Monetary Values not extracted

Posted December 3rd, 2007 by frederickf

Hi Joe,

The Parser for Micro Focus Cobol was downloaded and has recently has been used on Micro Focus Cobol .DAT files. The product is easy to use and based on our limited knowledge of the data appear to be give us useful results. However, we have identified a major issue, in that monetary fields are not been extracted.

Your assistance would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Frederick Francis

‹ Faircom c-tree parsing Data Parser for Btrieve ›

RE: Parser for Micro Focus Cobol - Monetary Values Not Extracted

On December 4th, 2007 jterrell said:

Hi Frederick,

I would recommend that you go through at least one of the tutorials that will walk you through the parsing of a sample Binary/COBOL data file. The tutorial can be found in the documentation for the Data Parser as follows:

  1. Go out to the DataTools web site and "purchase" (it's free for now) the Data Parser for Binary. There is not a tutorial specifically for Micro Focus COBOL, but the primary difference is that the Parser for Micro Focus COBOL automatically parses the data file into records, where the Data Parser for Binary requires you to set a starting offset and the record length before you can parse the records into fields. NOTE: You do NOT need to download or install the DataTools product again. Simply wait for the email that is sent to you after the new license file is created in our system, then open the DataTools Launcher and download the license file for the Data Parser for Binary and launch it from the Launcher.
  2. Launch the Data Parser for Binary.
  3. Click on the Help button (a blue question mark on the right end of the button bar).
  4. In the Help window, if the tabs labeled "Contents", "Index", etc., are not displayed by default, click on the "Show" button.
  5. Click on the Index tab, enter the word "tutorial" in the keyword box, and press .
  6. The first help topic that displays should be "tutorial links and descriptions". Double click on it to open the Help topic entitled "Using Tutorials to Learn the Integration Products".
  7. In the right side of the help window, scroll down in the table and click on "Structured Schema Designer - Tutorial 4". (We apologize that this has not yet been changed to say "Data Parser"; new documentation is coming soon with matching DataTools product names.)
  8. Print out the tutorial because it will be much easier to follow the steps while in the Data Parser for Binary.
  9. Complete Tutorial 4.

Another slight difference between Tutorial 4 and your DataTools installation is the location of the tutor4.bin file that is used in the tutorial. Assuming you installed the DataTools in the default location on your workstation, the tutor4.bin file will be located in this path\folder:

C:\Program Files\Pervasive\DataTools\Common800\tutor4.bin

Once you have completed Tutorial 4, you should be able to close the Data Parser for Binary, launch the Data Parser for Micro Focus COBOL and parse each remaining .DAT file into fields, and then export each to a CSV file.

Of course, if you have any questions, please let us know.

- Jo