Micro Focus Enterprise Developer 3.0 for Visual Studio 2013 > Programming > Data Access > Data Files > Data File Tools > File Conversion Utilities > DFCONV Batch File Conversion > Using the Data File Converter > Defining File Conversion with a Profile File > Specifying the Input File Parameters

Specifying the Input File Parameters

First of all, choose an input file:

Input-File: The input file name for the defined operation.

Then, use parameters to describe the input file:

Format

The file format for the input file. Valid values are:

Micro Focus
ESDS
Btrieve
IDXFORMAT(4)
Extended-ESDS
Vision
RM
C-ISAM
LEVEL-II
IDXFORMAT(8)

The default format is Micro Focus and this would normally be used for files downloaded from the host and recreated on the PC. If the chosen file is an emulation of the mainframe VSAM entry-sequenced data set, choose ESDS or Extended-ESDS to provide the emulation of VSAM ESDS on the PC.

Organization

The file organization for the input file. Valid values are:

Line sequential
Sequential
Indexed sequential
Relative
VRECGEN
ANSI Mainframe Report (The mainframe report with ANSI carriage control characters)
Machine Mainframe Report (The mainframe report with machine code carriage control characters)
PC Print.
Blocked-VRec

Record-Format

The record format for the input file. Valid values are:

Fixed
Variable

Variable length Mainframe Report files are not supported.

Character-Set

The character encoding used in the input file. Valid values are:

ASCII
EBCDIC

Note: The Windows environment uses the EBCIDIC and ANSI character encodings, and the UNIX/LINUX environments use the EBCIDIC and ASCII character encodings. The character encodings used in the ANSI and ASCII code pages are different.

Floating-Point

The type of floating-point format that is used in the input file.

IEEE
370

Compression

An indication that data compression is used for the input file. Valid values are:

This should only be set to On if the file was created with data compression.

Min-Rec-Length

The minimum record length for the input file.

If the file is fixed length this should be set to the same value as the maximum record length.

Max-Rec-Length

The maximum record length for the input file.

If the file being created is indexed, the keys are defined using the following records.

Prime-key

The start position of the key is either the column number or offset depending on the version of the profile being used. A colon is used to separate the position and length fields.

DFS Profile Files use a start position (column) starting at 1 with the prime key being in the format position:length (for example, 1:12).
DataTools Profiles use an offset starting at 0 with the prime key being in the format offset:length (for example, 1:12).

A second record in the profile file sets the key flags required for the indexed file being created. The flags are separated by a comma (for example: d,cd).

Flag	Description
d	allow duplicate record keys
s	sparse character - not supported
cd	compress duplicate record keys
cl	compress leading spaces on record keys
ct	compress trailing spaces on record keys