Re: PC Data files and the AS/400

Bruce

At 08:38 PM 5/6/1998 -0400, you wrote:
>Does any know if their is a way to to take data from the AS/400 and put it
>directly into a pcdata file like Betreive.  Can you tell the AS/400 that the
>data file is a remote file and sql into it?  Or can you use ILE RPG to do
>this.  I would also be interested if you could do this with access also.

This is an area that I'm really interested in. There are currently any
number of ways set forth for getting to AS/400 data from other platforms.
There's not very much on letting the AS/400 be the client. Don't know if I
have any good answers yet, but here are some thoughts:

1. The little bit I know of BTrieve is that its layout is very proprietary
and much-protected.

2. There is a thing called DRDA (Distributed Relational Database
Architecture) that promises to do some of what you're asking. It is a
protocol that is included in all the DB2 products, whether for mainframe or
DB2 Universal or DB2 for NT, etc.

This protocol can also be used with non-DB2 databases (like BTrieve) if the
DB vendor has provided soething called an ARD (application requester
driver). This is a program running on the 400 that is called whenever you
make an SQL request to the corresponding database machine. This is set up
on the 400 with the ADDRDBDIRE command. This ARD seems to similar
conceptually to an ODBC driver.

The problem here, as I've seen it recently, is that it's hard to find out
whether any ARD is available. I'm most interested right now in SQL Server.
Support Line _would_ not even point me in a general direction, other than
'the database vendor is responsible for creating the ARD'. Albeit true, I
wish IBM would at least have a resource list or something.

Soooo, you probably need to call BTrieve. Rumor has it that Oracle has one
of these things. Looking up DRDA at Microsoft's site showed me only pages
about something written by Starware (StarSQL) that uses an ODBC-DRDA
something-or-other to access data on hosts (400 & mainframe)—nothing the
other way. But I find it hard to believe MS doesn't have something like
this, considering they have now over 30 400s running their business. And
they must need to get SQL Server and Access and Foxpro data up to the 400,
maybe?

3. Related here is something called SQL Client Integration. It's mentioned
as an exit program in the File APIs section. Many formats are described,
along with pointers to the DRDA Reference. I'm just starting to look at
this, but it doen't look like something an inhouse developer such as I
would want to tackle. Besides, it would require deep knowledge of the
remote database, I think.

In the API Ref, it says that an ARD is actually a program registered under
this exit point. Questions—Questions—Questions

4. Short of acquiring one of these drivers, I think one could do some
remote execution stuff, say, to call something on the BTrieve server to
export the data to some common format (CSV, delimited, etc.), then use FTP
or ?? to retrieve the file, then process it, send it back, etc. I have been
involved in a little of this between an AS/400 and Oracle (if I remember)
on a Unix box.

5. Is there anything in Java to do this?

I hope to see more of allowing the 400 to act as a 'client' in database
transactions. I'm very interested in any more info here.

HTH

Vernon Hamberg
Systems Software Programmer
Old Republic National Title Insurance Company
400 Second Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN  55401-2499
(612) 371-1111 x480


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