Re: FTP weirdness -- MIDRANGE-L

Bruce,

Thanks for your note.

When I began to work with IBM's midrange systems, back in 1979, that was the
case in Venezuela. Many of us preferred our systems in English, as the first
translations left a lot to be desired. Additionally, new releases came out
first in English. Later on, as the translations got better, people began
to switch their systems to Spanish. Also, not everybody was fluent in
English (even technical personnel).

Unfortunately, our company has gone the SAP/ORACLE/HP route, and our i5 has
been left without software maintenance, stuck at V5R3. Fortunately, I can
still access the English version of the Infocenter, when I have the time.

Regards,

Luis Rodriguez
IBM Certified Systems Expert — eServer i5 iSeries
--

On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 8:22 AM, Bruce Vining <bvining@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

Luis,

I'm responding to your comment (rather than the topic FTP Weirdness):

"This has been a somewhat crazy day (not a good excuse, I know) and,
believe
me, IBM's translations of their help texts (our i5 is in Spanish) sometimes
are a little confusing.."

Don't forget that the i can support multiple languages concurrently. When I
was back in the lab it was noticed that some geographic locations, in
addition to their national language, had rather significant percentages of
their systems ordered with English. In an extrme case one Asian country had
in the neighborhood of 97% of their system ordered with English as the
primary language (which caught our attention!) and then their national
language as a secondary language. With a little investigation we found that
the reason was related to customer support personnel (operations,
development) wanting, in the case of really technical second level help
text, to read the English text as provided directly by the developers --
and not risk any potential loss of information that could be introduced by
translation services. The translations provided by IBM are generally quite
good but there are some rather detailed messages (database for some reason
coming to mind lol) that can require more than one reading by even the best
of developers (even when using the English text), let alone by translators
who cannot be technical experts in all areas of the system.
You may want to check out the possibility of ordering English as a
secondary
national language version (NLV) for your system.

Bruce Vining

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 8:05 PM, Luis Rodriguez <luisro58@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Mark,

Thanks for your answer. Scott Klement and Rob Berendt were also very kind
to
set me straight on these particular points (FTP server and client).

This has been a somewhat crazy day (not a good excuse, I know) and,

believe

me, IBM's translations of their help texts (our i5 is in Spanish)

sometimes

are a little confusing..

Thanks again,

Luis Rodriguez
IBM Certified Systems Expert — eServer i5 iSeries
--

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 5:04 PM, Mark Murphy/STAR BASE Consulting Inc. <
mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If you look at the help for CHGFTPA, right up at the top it says:
The Change FTP attributes (CHGFTPA) command changes the
configuration for the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers.

In an FTP transfer there are always two applications running, the

server,

and the client. The server is the side that sits and listens for

requests,

the client is the side that is making the requests. Based on the OP
question, the server in this case in on the Sterling Integrator FTP

server

side, and the client is on the IBM i side. I am also guessing that the
files with CCSID(500) is already there, and is also on the IBM i side.

If

this is indeed the case, then CHGFTPA will do nothing since it affects

only

the FTP server on the IBM i side, and the FTP server is not involved in

this

transfer on the IBM i side, the server is on the Sterling Integrator

side.

I also looked at the help for the FTP command (the client piece of this
transfer). For the CCSID parameter it says:
Coded character set identifier (CCSID) - Help

Specifies the ASCII coded character set identifier (CCSID) that is used
for single-byte character set (SBCS) ASCII file transfers when the FTP
TYPE mode is set to ASCII. ASCII file transfers are also assumed when
no TYPE subcommand has been issued. The CCSID value chosen is the
default used by the FTP client for ASCII-to-EBCDIC and EBCDIC-to-ASCII
mapping. Mapping is determined using the specified ASCII CCSID and the
EBCDIC CCSID of the job.

So the ASCII CCSID is the one specified, or if *DFT is specified it

uses

819 (further down in the help). And the EBCDIC CCSID is the Job CCSID.
Nothing tells what CCSID is used if the file already exists, in my
experience it has always been the file CCSID. Of course if the file

was

pre-existing, and has a CCSID of 500, how did it get that in the first

place

if your system CCSID is 65535/37? Do you have multiple languages? Did

you

restore the file from a system with CCSID(500)? Did someone manually

set

it

that way? If you are creating the files each time, check the job
description of the job that runs the FTP command.

Mark Murphy
STAR BASE Consulting, Inc.
mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: -----
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Luis Rodriguez
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: 08/26/2011 03:42PM
Subject: Re: FTP weirdness

Scott,

I overlooked the part about Sterling Integrator in my response, as I
thought
it was a software running in the other server (the "PC" side). As I

have

just posted, it has been a somewhat complicated afternoon.

I'm just a little curious about your assertion that the CHGFTPA

parameters

don't do any difference here. As I see it (and it could be an error of
my part interpreting the help text of the command), CRTCCSID works

every

time the file is created (in the "library" file system), regardless of

who

the client is.

Regards,

Luis Rodriguez
IBM Certified Systems Expert — eServer i5 iSeries
--

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 2:44 PM, Scott Klement
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

Hello,

I'm not going to pretend that I understand why you're getting a file
marked with CCSID 500.

However, the info from CHGFTPA that you posted isn't relevant to this
transfer, is it? Didn't you say the server was running Sterling
Integrator?!

If you are using the IBM FTP *client*, then the relevant settings are
specified on the FTP (or STRTCPFTP) command.

CHGFTPA designates the settings for the IBM-supplied FTP *server*,

not

the client.

Also, please be aware that if the file already exists, it'll retain

it's

CCSID. If you're letting FTP create a new file (not recommended for
physical files) then it should assign the job's CCSID (which would be

37

in your case, which is why I said I don't pretend to understand.)

On 8/26/2011 9:16 AM, sjl wrote:

Background:

=======================================
System is Power 6, V5R4, QCCSID = 65535
=======================================

PC 5250 5.9 session configured to use Host code-page 37:

Display Job Definition Attributes
Job: XXXXXXXXXX User: WINBLOWS Number: 161946

Job switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : 00000000
Inquiry message reply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *SYSRPYL
Accounting code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :
Print text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : '

'

DDM conversation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *KEEP
Break message handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *NORMAL
Status message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *NORMAL
Device recovery action . . . . . . . . . . . . . :

*ENDJOBNOLIST

Time slice end pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *NONE
Print key format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *PRTHDR
Sort sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *HEX
Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :
Language identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : ENU
Country or region identifier . . . . . . . . . . : US
Coded character set identifier . . . . . . . . . : 65535
Default coded character set identifier . . . . . : 37
Character identifier control . . . . . . . . . . : *DEVD
Job message queue maximum size . . . . . . . . . : 64
Job message queue full action . . . . . . . . . . : *PRTWRAP
Allow multiple threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *NO
Auxiliary storage pool group . . . . . . . . . . : *NONE
Spooled file action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *KEEP

=======================================
When prompting the CHGFTPA command, I see:

Change FTP Attributes (CHGFTPA)
Type choices, press Enter.

Autostart servers . . . . . . . AUTOSTART> *YES
Number of initial servers . . . NBRSVR> 3
Inactivity timeout . . . . . . . INACTTIMO 300
Coded character set identifier CCSID 00819
Outgoing EBCDIC/ASCII table: TBLFTPOUT
Outgoing EBCDIC/ASCII table . *CCSID
Library . . . . . . . . . .
Incoming ASCII/EBCDIC table: TBLFTPIN
Incoming ASCII/EBCDIC table . *CCSID
Library . . . . . . . . . .
Initial name format . . . . . . NAMEFMT *LIB
Initial directory . . . . . . . CURDIR *CURLIB
Initial list format . . . . . . LISTFMT *DFT
New file CCSID . . . . . . . . . CRTCCSID *CALC
Subsystem description . . . . . SBSD QSYSWRK
Library . . . . . . . . . . . QSYS

=======================================

Question:

When I interactively run an FTP script from the Power system to do

an

MGET

from a Sterling Integrator FTP server, I notice that the file(s)

received

get tagged with CCSID(500).

Given the above information, why is the system determining that

CCSID(500)

is the correct CCSID to use? I would expect CCSID(37)...

Regards,
sjl

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Regards,
Bruce
www.brucevining.com
www.powercl.com
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