Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved


Chapter 2 The COBOL Copybook Palette : Render Copybook Data

Render Copybook Data
Activity
The Render Copybook Data activity allows you to supply XML data based on the schema defined by a COBOL Copybook resource and then renders that data as a byte stream that can be consumed by a COBOL program.
Configuration
The configuration tab has the following fields.
 
The name to appear as the label for the activity in the process definition.
The Copybook Schema shared configuration resource that defines the schema to use to render the XML data as COBOL data.
Are the binary (COMP) values in Big Endian format?
This field specifies the byte order of the rendered data. Check this field to specify the byte order is Big Endian (for example, this format is used on IBM mainframes and some UNIX platforms). Uncheck this field if the byte order is Little Endian (for example, this format is used by MS Windows and some UNIX platforms).
The character set encoding used by string values in the rendered data; also affects the rendering of zoned decimal values. For details, see Handling of Zoned Decimal Items.
Note that only single byte character sets are available in the Render Copybook Data activity.
Uncheck if only one only record should be rendered. In this case, only the first child of the “Input” element from the input XML will be rendered as a single record. Otherwise, all child elements will be rendered as records, separated by the delimiter specified in the Records Delimiter field.
Specifies the delimiter used between records in the output data. The following are the types of delimiters you can specify:
None — specifies that a new record begins directly after the last record ends. There is no character separating each record.
New Line — specifies that a new line character separates records in the output.
Carriage Return — specifies that a carriage return character separates records in the output.
Carriage Return/Line Feed — specifies that a carriage return character followed by a line feed character separates records in the output.
The above values are specific to the Unix and Windows platforms. Using record delimiters is not recommended when the Render As property is set to String. See the warning below.
Specifies the fill character to use between elements of each data record. NULL is the default fill character, but you can select either NULL or Space as the fill character.
Specifies the output data format. The output data can be rendered as one of the following:
Bytes —The data is rendered as a byte stream.
String —The data is rendered as a string. The data string has character set encoding as specified in the description of Character Set field in this table.
 
You should use caution when specifying the String value for the Render As property. This value instructs the Render activity to generate a string for the entire result of rendering using a specific character set.
This is strongly discouraged when the copybook contains fields with binary representation, such as fields with usage BINARY (COMP), COMP-1 COMP-2, COMP3, or zoned decimal fields without SIGN SEPARATE. Refer to the COBOL specification for details.
In addition, Render As String is not recommended for rendering multiple records with a record delimiter. Possible values of the Records Delimiter property are specific to the Unix/Windows platforms and, depending on the character set, may yield unexpected characters.
When Render As String is used in the above cases, it is likely that the binary data will be converted to meaningless characters in the output string. Also, it is possible that the binary values will not be recoverable from the resulting string.
Input
See TIBCO BusinessWorks Process Design Guide for more information about mapping and transforming input data.
The input for the activity is the following.
The XML schema defined by the Copybook Schema resource specified on the Configuration tab.
Output
The output for the activity is the following.
Error Output
The Error Output tab lists the possible exceptions that can be thrown by this activity. See TIBCO BusinessWorks Error Codes for more information about error codes and corrective action to take.

Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved