Hi Jack
Data Transfer component of ACS is an end-user tool, not a developer
tool. I did not ask but do wonder if Robert is trying write his own DTFX
file by hand. The interface has a lot of help in it - click on the
question-mark in the blue circle. To get to all the help available, go
to the ACS install location and look for something like this -
C:\Users\Vern\OneDrive\Documents\IBM\iAccessClient_Help\DataTransfer\en
(it may or may not include OneDrive - have I said how much I dislike
OneDrive? -it all depends on how ACS got installed)
The main thing is to find iAccessClient_Help - I see 57 HTML files. If a
person wanted to wild, that person could assemble it all into a document.
On adding several files, the help on the main page has this info -
To browse the contents of a library, either leave the*File name*field
blank, or specify a library name followed by a slash character, for
example:/QIWS//
And from there you pick a file/member, one at a time, as many as you
need - you get a comma-separated list.
That's coming from one of the HTML files. And remember, this is _not_ a
developer tool. But the thing that _is_ generated is basically a
good-old INI file, so yes, one can construct it.
As I mentioned in my other post, there is an option to select how the
SELECT is processed, Data Transfer format or native SQL - that is
intriguing. In any case, I suggest Robert, et al., assemble one of these
from the interface, as desired, see what's in the DTFX, and
lather-rinse-repeat to your heart's content!
I've seen places that have hundreds or thousands of these things (or
TTOs or DTFs) - when you look inside, you see the clauses of a SELECT
statement, basically. To replace these, I might look inside the DTFX
file in an editor, pull the various elements into a SELECT and run it
with whatever works best for you - for some it will be a tool like
SEQUEL or NGS-IQ - maybe Python.
The HELP is not going to document the syntax of DTFX or DTTX files in an
obvious way, but it should help get examples to study.
I did look at what the wizard prompt allows for JOINs - looks like the
old approach to list tables, comma-separated, then use the where clause
to define the JOIN - the wizard only seems to allow INNER JOIN kinds of
things, which, of course, what the old approach did. So to get other
JOIN types, you might have to get fancy with your WHERE clause - and you
can.
Reverse-engineering is so much fun! And here be dragons!
Cheers
Vern
On 8/10/2022 10:56 PM, Jack Woehr via MIDRANGE-L wrote:
My minimal experience with iACS DTFX is that it looks like a simple way to
export data but it's really difficult and under-documented.
I have succeeded and have my own simple examples, but why go through all
this when you can issue any SQL query and write to .xlsx in Python
yum install python39-pyodbc
pip install XlsxWriter
and off you go.
There Is A Reason IBM Has Been Telling Us That Open Source Is The Path
Forward ... they're not just pulling our legs.
On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 8:17 PM Vern Hamberg via MIDRANGE-L <
midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Robert
Have you looked at the help in the Data Transfer interface?
midrange.com
