Using the Adapters for Fixed-Format and Delimited Files

Describes how to configure the Adapter for Fixed-Format and Delimited Files.

The Adapters for Fixed-Format and Delimited Flat Files access sequential files, where records are stored and retrieved in the same order as they are entered. Sequential data sources may be:

• Fixed-format files (identified as flat files in prior releases), in which each field occupies a predefined position in the record. (To maintain the fixed structure, unoccupied positions are filled by blanks.)
• Delimited-format files (identified as delimited files in this chapter), in which fields are stored in a predefined sequence, separated (that is, delimited) by a special character. (Although fields must maintain their predefined order in the file, blanks are not required to represent unoccupied positions.)

The adapters convert application requests into input/output (I/O) calls and return optimized answer sets to the requesting application.

You can also access compressed data sets with this adapter. However, the actual compression is done using the ZCOMP Exit. For details, see Data Set Compression Exit: ZCOMP.