Re: ODBC
From: JerryMouse (nospam_at_bisusa.com)
Date: 10/27/03
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Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 18:30:52 -0600
JerryMouse wrote:
> DLI wrote:
>> Thank you for the response.
>> My company is Equisoft, Inc.
>>
>> Here is my situation. We provide software to the Equine industry. One
>> of our competitors has gone out of business. (The sole proprietor is
>> deceased). The competitor's name was EDMS (Equine Data Management
>> Systems)
>>
>> Their application was written in COBOL which appears to be a product
>> vended by
>> Liant Software Corporation
>>
>> I have a copy of the folder that contains the COBOL source and data.
>> The files that contain the program information (based on their file
>> dates and size) have an extension of DAT
>>
>> There is a reg file in the folder that contains references to
>> Liant Software Corporation
>>
>> The potential customer would just like us to import the current list
>> of clients from the COBOL system into the product that we sell.
>>
>> We have MS certified engineers in Access and SQL Server but none with
>> experience using COBOL.
>> I suspect that these files are ISAM but I have no way of knowing for
>> sure.
>
> There are a couple of possible solutions:
> 1. Assuming your prospect is still running the mysterious software,
> he can probably export the data to some universal (text?) format.
> From this intermediate reckoning, you can probably one-off an import
> program.
>
> 2. If the original owner is deceased, perhaps a modest fee to his
> estate will get you access to the original source code.
>
> 3. If, by inspection, you can't make heads or tails out of the data
> file, the data file is probably ISAM. If the data were a relative or
> variable-length file, you'd see the data with an occassional "what's
> this?" intersperced. Entering the terms: "liant cobol isam" into
> Google resulted in almost 100 references, including several
> conversion tools.
>
> The inherent difficulty in #3 is the specificity of the data. Here's
> the number "000500." Is that a price? A length? Quantity sold last
> December? Number of relatives with red hair?
>
> Our company once bought out a competitor in a situation similar to
> yours - it worked out well for everyone: us, the competitor, and the
> customers. We paid nothing up front, and only paid as the customers
> converted to our system (at less that our normal sales commission).
> Our costs were a conversion program - we gained access to the
> competitor's source - and a little technical support.
Arghh! I overlooked your statement that you had the original source. That
being the case, anyone conversant with COBOL can tell the data layout. To
confirm you're dealing with an ISAM file, look at the beginning of each
source module for statements of the form:
SELECT something ASSIGN TO something
ORGANIZATION IS INDEXED
ACCESS IS something
RECORD KEY IS something
FILE STATUS IS something.
Finding the above, you've got indexed files.
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