Re: Off topic - using tn5250 in production environments

There are a lot of ways to handle this, and a better place to discuss it
would be over on MIDRANGE-L.

But, quickly:

1) Only a very few of our users are computer savvy enough to actually
     make/use a CSV file.   For the others, we generate the files for
     them, and automagically download them and/or run programs that
     utilize them.   If we're going to do this automatically, I
     prefer to just have an RPG prgoram that reads the database and
     generates the stream file in CSV (or any other format I like).

2) For users who actually want/need to be able to generate their own
     CSV for any file at their own convienience.  They can use CPYTOIMPF
     on the iSeries to convert a database to CSV format.   Use CPYTOSTMF
     to convert it to ASCII and then FTP the file to their PC.
     (Although, a relatively simple CL program could combine those
     two steps)

3) Finally, we have one file that MUST be in Excel format, which we can't
     generate with CPYTOIMPF.   For that, we still use RUMBA's file
     transfer.


On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Brian Hill wrote:
>
>     May I ask how you handle things like downloading data from a physical
> file into a CSV format?  Client Access has a "File Transfer Utility" that
> lets you download data from PF's into various PC formats.
>