Re: Thoughts/experiences with JSON/XML on DB2

Hi Justin

Just to clarify - is this a PF (physical file) or an LF (logical file)?

When you say multiple format, some might be assuming an LF - but it's probably a flat file with different formats.

OK, so each record will have 1 or more record identifying codes - this is used in the RPG I-specs to tell you which one you are using. The F-specs can tell you where and how long the key is - then you'd need to find out from the I-specs which fields are in the key.

You mentioned there are 25 formats in this file - that seems way too many - typically these are header/detail/extended-detail kinds of things.

Look at the record-identification entries in your I-specs - those tell you how many you have - in fact, your F-specs should tell you how many.

You COULD do SQL by using this identifier in a WHERE clause - then having substrings of the entire record based on the format for each identifier - YUK!!

You call it "non-structured data" - I must disagree, and I think that took you down a curious yellow brick road - it is a flat file with several (25?) unique structures, 1 per record.

So your columns come from the I-specs, the index comes from a combination of information in and F-spec and the related I-specs - ba-da-bing! EZ-PZ! Right?

HTH
Vern

On 4/1/2016 9:18 AM, Justin Taylor wrote:

Booth Martin:
--This is live data with new records being added daily.
--Extracting the non-structured data into a traditional RDBMS was my first thought. Then I thought that a NoSQL type approach might be better, since NoSQL was originally intended for use with non-structured data (although the authors probably never considered S/36 files).
--I'm not sure either type of extraction would be significantly more difficult than the other.

Rob Berendt:
--"Multiformat join logical file", those emulate the multiple record formats seen in S/36 files, correct? Does SQL support those?