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Reading COBOL DAT File

I have been given a set of COBOL DAT, IDX and KEY files, and I need to read the data in them and export them to Access, XLS, CSV, etc. I do not know the version, the COBOL code provider, because I only have the Windows executable that created the files.

I tried the Easysoft and Parkway ODBC drivers, but I was unable to read the data from the files.

I do not have access to the source code because the company that distributed this product disconnected.

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4 answers

A few possibilities.

1 / See if you can find the names of people who worked for the company. They may be helpful.

2 / Open the DAT file in a text editor. Data can be decoded from this. If the base format can be recognized, you can write quick'n'dirty code to extract it.

3 / Open the executable file in the editor, there may be lines indicating which compiler was used, then you can search for information about your file formats. If this is a DOS application, there is a good chance that it is either Microsoft or Fujitsu COBOL.

4 / Consider placing job requests in workplaces such as elance or rentacoder; I do not think it is worth it if the work cannot be completed successfully.

5 / Take someone to study it and report on the likelihood of recovery.

6 / Get a screen dump of the contents of the record for each active record and redesign it from this.

Some of them are quite complicated, so your mileage may vary.

Good luck.

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I have successfully read some dat files using http://www.cobolproducts.com/datafile , which I learned through another forum. Most likely, I will work with them to help me read the rest of the files that I'm having a problem with.

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I only read COBOL DAT files with FD, when I don't have FD, I open the file in a text editor and try to guess the columns and try again until I have this job, a big problem with this approach when there are COMP columns in the DAT file that can be any type of COMP, but with a little patience, I do it coldly.

I tried Parkway ODBC, but to no avail.

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for everyone who goes through this journey, I found this in sourceforge: Cobol and an RPG data reader and converter

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cobol2j/

I need to try, it sounds promising

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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/1276917/

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