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COBOL Copybook File - Import

Availability-note AWS

Information note Note: This file format needs to be imported with the File System (Delimited, Fixed Width, Excel, XML, JSON, Avro, Parquet, ORC, COBOL Copybook), Apache Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS Java API) or Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 Storage bridges.

Bridge Specifications

Vendor ISO
Tool Name COBOL Copybook File
Tool Version 1985
Tool Web Site http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=51416
Supported Methodology [File System] Data Store (Physical Data Model, Logical Data Model) via Cobol Copybook File
Data Profiling
Incremental Harvesting
Multi-Model Harvesting
Remote Repository Browsing for Model Selection

SPECIFICATIONS
Tool: ISO / COBOL Copybook File version 1985 via Cobol Copybook File
See http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=51416
Metadata: [File System] Data Store (Physical Data Model, Logical Data Model)
Component: CobolCopybook version 11.2.0

OVERVIEW
This bridge can only import the COBOL COPYBOOK files (which contain the data definitions), therefore does not detect (reverse engineer) metadata from actual COBOL data files.
The detection of such COBOL COPYBOOK file is not based on file extensions (such as .CPY) but rather by sampling the file content.

This bridge creates a 'Physical Hierarchical Model' which reflects a truly flat, byte-position defined, record structure, which is useful for stitching to the DI/ETL processes. Therefore, the physical model has all the physical elements required to define a flat record, which is ONE table with all the elements (including multiple columns for OCCURS elements when the proper bridge parameter is set).

Note that this bridge does not currently support the COPY verb, and reports a parsing error at the line and position at which the COPY statement begins. In order to import Copybooks with the Copy Statement, create an expanded Copybook file with the included sections already in place (replacing the COPY verb). Most COBOL compilers have the option to output only the preprocessed Copybooks with the COPY and REPLACE statements expanded.

Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: Why is the default start column '6' (six) and the default end column '72' (seventy-two)?
A: The bridge parser counts columns starting at 0 (zero), rather than 1 (one). Thus, the defaults leave the standard first six columns for line numbers, next column for comment indicators, and last 8 columns (out of 80) for additional line comment information.

LIMITATIONS
Refer to the current general known limitations at https://metaintegration.com/Products/MIMB/Help/#!Documents/mimbknownlimitations.html

DISCLAIMER
This bridge requires internet access to download third-party libraries:
- Such as the Maven Central Repository to download open source third-party libraries,
- and more sites for other third-party software such as database specific JDBC drivers.

The downloaded third-party libraries are stored into $HOME/data/download/MIMB/
- If HTTPS fails, the bridge then tries with HTTP.
- If a proxy is used to access internet, you must configure that proxy in the JRE (see the -j option in the Miscellaneous parameter).
- If the bridge does not have full access to internet, that $HOME/data/download/MIMB/ directory can be copied from another server with internet access where the command $HOME/bin/MIMB.sh (or .bat) -d can be used to download all third-party libraries used by all bridges at once.

By running this bridge, you hereby acknowledge responsibility for the license terms and any potential security vulnerabilities from these downloaded third-party software libraries.


Bridge Parameters

Parameter Name Description Type Values Default Scope
File Bridge reads metadata from the COBOL copybook file or COBOL File Description (CFD). FILE
*.txt
*.cfd
  Mandatory
Encoding Specify the encoding of the text in the COBOL file. ENUMERATED
Central and Eastern European (ISO-8859-2)
Central and Eastern European (Windows-1250)
Chinese Traditional (Big5)
Chinese Simplified (GB18030)
Chinese Simplified (GB2312)
Cyrillic (ISO-8859-5)
Cyrillic (Windows-1251)
DOS (IBM-850)
Greek (ISO-8859-7)
Greek (Windows-1253)
Hebrew (ISO-8859-8)
Hebrew (Windows-1255)
Japanese (Shift_JIS)
Korean (KS_C_5601-1987)
Thai (TIS620)
Thai (Windows-874)
Turkish (ISO-8859-9)
Turkish (Windows-1254)
UTF 8 (UTF-8)
UTF 16 (UTF-16)
Western European (ISO-8859-1)
Western European (ISO-8859-15)
Western European (Windows-1252)
Locale encoding
No encoding conversion
utf-8  
Import model as Specifies how to import the model.

'Physical hierarchical model'
represent a Copybook as a Hierarchical file. This is the default.

'Logical data model'
represent a Copybook as a data modeling.
ENUMERATED
Physical hierarchical model
Logical data model
Physical hierarchical model  
Run COBOL copybook parser in verbose mode Run COBOL copybook parser in verbose mode if there are parsing problems arise. This setting will help to identify causes of the warnings and errors reported by the import bridge. BOOLEAN
False
True
False  
Expand multiply occuring records Expand multiply occurring records into multiple attributes.

For example record:
30 OCCURS-TEST PIC X OCCURS 3 TIMES.

will be represented as list of attributes with names like:
OCCURS-TEST(1)
OCCURS-TEST(2)
OCCURS-TEST(3)

Occurence within occurence:
30 OCCURS-GROUP OCCURS 3 TIMES.
40 OCCURS-TEST PIC X OCCURS 2 TIMES.

is represented as:
OCCURS-TEST(1,1)
OCCURS-TEST(1,2)
OCCURS-TEST(2,1)
OCCURS-TEST(2,2)
OCCURS-TEST(3,1)
OCCURS-TEST(3,2)
BOOLEAN
False
True
False  
Import fillers Specifies whether filler field names should be imported.

'True'
Filler field names are imported.

'False'
Filler field names are ignored. This is the default value.
BOOLEAN
False
True
False  
Miscellaneous INTRODUCTION
Specify miscellaneous options starting with a dash and optionally followed by parameters, e.g.
-connection.cast MyDatabase1="MICROSOFT SQL SERVER"
Some options can be used multiple times if applicable, e.g.
-connection.rename NewConnection1=OldConnection1 -connection.rename NewConnection2=OldConnection2;
As the list of options can become a long string, it is possible to load it from a file which must be located in ${MODEL_BRIDGE_HOME}\data\MIMB\parameters and have the extension .txt. In such case, all options must be defined within that file as the only value of this parameter, e.g.
ETL/Miscellaneous.txt

JAVA ENVIRONMENT OPTIONS
-java.memory <Java Memory's maximum size> (previously -m)

1G by default on 64bits JRE or as set in conf/conf.properties, e.g.
-java.memory 8G
-java.memory 8000M

-java.parameters <Java Runtime Environment command line options> (previously -j)

This option must be the last one in the Miscellaneous parameter as all the text after -java.parameters is passed "as is" to the JRE, e.g.
-java.parameters -Dname=value -Xms1G
The following option must be set when a proxy is used to access internet (this is critical to access https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/ and exceptionally a few other tool sites) in order to download the necessary third-party software libraries.
Note: The majority of proxies are concerned with encrypting (HTTPS) the outside (of the company) traffic and trust the inside traffic that can access proxy over HTTP. In this case, an HTTPS request reaches the proxy over HTTP where the proxy HTTPS-encrypts it.
-java.parameters -java.parameters -Dhttp.proxyHost=127.0.0.1 -Dhttp.proxyPort=3128 -Dhttp.proxyUser=user -Dhttp.proxyPassword=pass

MODEL IMPORT OPTIONS
-model.name <model name>

Override the model name, e.g.
-model.name "My Model Name"

-prescript <script name>

This option allows running a script before the bridge execution.
The script must be located in the bin directory (or as specified with M_SCRIPT_PATH in conf/conf.properties), and have .bat or .sh extension.
The script path must not include any parent directory symbol (..).
The script should return exit code 0 to indicate success, or another value to indicate failure.
For example:
-prescript "script.bat arg1 arg2"

-postscript <script name>

This option allows running a script after successful execution of the bridge.
The script must be located in the bin directory (or as specified with M_SCRIPT_PATH in conf/conf.properties), and have .bat or .sh extension.
The script path must not include any parent directory symbol (..).
The script should return exit code 0 to indicate success, or another value to indicate failure.
For example:
-postscript "script.bat arg1 arg2"

-cache.clear

Clears the cache before the import, and therefore will run a full import without incremental harvesting.

If the model was not changed and the -cache.clear parameter is not used (incremental harvesting), then a new version will not be created.
If the model was not changed and the -cache.clear parameter is set (full source import instead of incremental), then a new version will be created.

-backup <directory>

Allows to save the input metadata for further troubleshooting. The provided <directory> must be empty.

-restore <directory>

Specify the backup <directory> to be restored.

DATA CONNECTION OPTIONS
Data Connections are produced by the import bridges typically from ETL/DI and BI tools to refer to the source and target data stores they use. These data connections are then used by metadata management tools to connect them (metadata stitching) to their actual data stores (e.g. databases, file system, etc.) in order to produce the full end to end data flow lineage and impact analysis. The name of each data connection is unique by import model. The data connection names used within DI/BI design tools are used when possible, otherwise connection names are generated to be short but meaningful such as the database / schema name, the file system path, or Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). The following option allows to manipulate connections. These options replaces the legacy options -c, -cd, and -cs.

-connection.cast ConnectionName=ConnectionType

Casts a generic database connection (e.g. ODBC/JDBC) to a precise database type (e.g. ORACLE) for SQL Parsing, e.g.
-connection.cast "My Database"="MICROSOFT SQL SERVER".
The list of supported data store connection types includes:
ACCESS
APACHE CASSANDRA
DB2/UDB
DENODO
GOOGLE BIGQUERY
HIVE
MYSQL
NETEZZA
ORACLE
POSTGRESQL
PRESTO
REDSHIFT
SALESFORCE
SAP HANA
SNOWFLAKE
MICROSOFT SQL AZURE
MICROSOFT SQL SERVER
SYBASE SQL SERVER
SYBASE AS ENTERPRISE
TERADATA
VECTORWISE
HP VERTICA

-connection.rename OldConnection=NewConnection

Renames an existing connection to a new name, e.g.
-connection.rename OldConnectionName=NewConnectionName
Multiple existing database connections can be renamed and merged into one new database connection, e.g.
-connection.rename MySchema1=MyDatabase -connection.rename MySchema2=MyDatabase

-connection.split oldConnection.Schema1=newConnection

Splits a database connection into one or multiple database connections.
A single database connection can be split into one connection per schema, e.g.
-connection.split MyDatabase
All database connections can be split into one connection per schema, e.g.
-connection.split *
A database connection can be explicitly split creating a new database connection by appending a schema name to a database, e.g.
-connection.split MyDatabase.schema1=MySchema1

-connection.map SourcePath=DestinationPath

Maps a source path to destination path. This is useful for file system connections when different paths points to the same object (directory or file).
On Hadoop, a process can write into a CSV file specified with the HDFS full path, but another process reads from a Hive table implemented (external) by the same file specified using a relative path with default file name and extension, e.g.
-connection.map /user1/folder=hdfs://host:8020/users/user1/folder/file.csv
On Linux, a given directory (or file) like /data can be referred to by multiple symbolic links like /users/john and /users/paul, e.g.
-connection.map /data=/users/John -connection.map /data=/users/paul
On Windows, a given directory like C:\data can be referred to by multiple network drives like M: and N:, e.g.
-connection.map C:\data=M:\ -connection.map C:\data=N:\

-connection.casesensitive ConnectionName...

Overrides the default case insensitive matching rules for the object identifiers inside the specified connection, provided the detected type of the data store by itself supports this configuration (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server, MySql etc.), e.g.
-connection.casesensitive "My Database"

-connection.caseinsensitive ConnectionName...

Overrides the default case sensitive matching rules for the object identifiers inside the specified connection, provided the detected type of the data store by itself supports this configuration (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server, MySql etc.), e.g.
-connection.caseinsensitive "My Database"

-connection.level AggregationLevel

Specifies the aggregation level for the external connections, e.g.-connection.level catalog
The list of the supported values:
server
catalog
schema (default)

COBOL COPYBOOK OPTIONS
-s <column number>

Start column index in the COBOL copybook file for the parser, e.g.
-s 6

-e <column number>

End column index in the COBOL copybook file for the parser, e.g.
-e 72
STRING      

 

Bridge Mapping

Meta Integration Repository (MIR)
Metamodel
(based on the OMG CWM standard)
"COBOL Copybook File"
Metamodel
CobolCopybook
Mapping Comments
     
Attribute Record Records that do not have any sub-record.
Name Name  
PhysicalName Name  
Position   Caclucated based on the record offsets and lengths
BaseType Picture Cacluated from picture. See DerivedType.
Class Record Record that has sub-records.
Name Name  
PhysicalName Name  
ClassDiagram   All records are included into default diagram automatically.
DerivedType Picture  
Length Picture  
Name Picture  
Scale Picture  
DesignPackage Record Created for records that have sub-records to display hierarchy.
Name Name  
FileDirectory COBOL Copybook file  
Name File name  
Generalization Record Created for records that have sub-records and parentrecord.
Name name  
GeneralizationRole Record  
StoreModel COBOL Copybook file  
Name File name  

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