Re: "Copying" PF-DTA to client via RDi's "Make Available Offline" generates a .OAR file

John

You really need to start using RDi - then you'd know more and not have to apologize for ignorance. Nonetheless, your subjunctive "what ifs" do have some value, insomuch as they trigger thoughts in others.

RDi does already convert EBCDIC to an editable form - otherwise none of us could use it - source members that are downloaded are converted on the fly.

Working off-line is a feature that has been around almost from the beginning - it lets you keep editing when you are not connected - big DOH there, right? And I believe that verification of code is possible offline, as well.

It appears that the OP has not yet tried to edit what was put in the archive - it may be that RDi knows what to do with the thing IT created in the first place.

Well worth a look into the help text - one hopes the info is there.

On 3/18/2015 1:36 AM, John Yeung wrote:

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 5:52 PM, Dan <dan27649@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But, once extracted, I'm guessing I need an editor that reads
EBCDIC. Any recommendations?

Well, I would have thought RDi does! (That's only partly a joke.)

My hex editor of choice, which does read EBCDIC and is freeware, is HxD:

http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

Now, forgive me for being ignorant of RDi-centric workflows, but what
do you do with this PF once you've got a local copy? If it can
somehow be used by RDi to check your source code (verify you've got
the right field names and are using them appropriately, etc.), then
OK. I would imagine there's no other choice than to have it the way
RDi gives it to you (because it's really giving it to itself).

But if you want a local copy so that you can inspect the data, then
either RDi should already have some facility for this, or you really
ought to consider working with the data in some other form.

What I normally do when I want to work with data off-line, is download
as CSV or Excel, and then work with it locally using Python. Python's
data capabilities are pretty impressive, actually. But there are
plenty of other choices, including setting up an actual database on
your PC. It wouldn't be DB2 for i, but it would have similar
capabilities.

I am still kind of amazed that you write RPG off-line. It would never
occur to me to do that. So maybe you want to work with data in a way
that hadn't occurred to me either.

John Y.