home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu.tar
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu
/
icon
/
newsgrp
/
group95b.txt
/
000055_icon-group-sender _Mon Jun 19 00:20:18 1995.msg
< prev
next >
Wrap
Internet Message Format
|
1995-09-18
|
3KB
Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Mon, 19 Jun 1995 09:03:44 MST
To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
Date: 19 Jun 1995 00:20:18 GMT
From: berniegs@ix.netcom.com (Bernie Schneider)
Message-Id: <3s2fs2$3e2@ixnews6.ix.netcom.com>
Organization: Netcom
Sender: icon-group-request@cs.arizona.edu
References: <3s16gr$env@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: ICON and Data Conversion
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
In <3s16gr$env@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> dcorbo@ix.netcom.com (Dennis
Corbo) writes:
>
>In the last few years, I've worked on several downsizing and data
>warehouse projects. One of the requirements is always to take
mainframe
>information and convert it into some format that can be loaded into
the
>new system database, usually UNIX based but I suspect I'll be working
>with NT soon. When I perform this work, I require the delivery of a
>plain ascii text file. I then use KSH with PERL or AWK to parse the
>file and create the file(s) for loading. Some of the conversion
>processing involves creating relationships with several other files or
>database tables for referential integrity or looking up descriptive
>data, etc. I am always looking for good tools that can make my work
>easier and of better quality. I would like to know if ICON is
suitable
>for this type of work.
>
>Dennis Corbo
ICON is certainly suitable for this type of work, but even though I
have ICON available for the extensive amounts of data conversion that I
must frequently perform, I was surprised to discover that AWK seems to
be the language that I most frequently choose for most of these tasks.
It's nothing against ICON. I still use it a lot, but it just seems like
AWK has about the right combination of simplicity, power, and ease of
programming for doing data conversions. I understand that AWK was
designed with such tasks in mind.
I find that such functions as split, (g)sub, and printf, plus the
regular expressions are indispensible most of the times I have to
convert data, and none of them are available in ICON directly, although
suitable substitutes can be found or developed for them.
Incidently I also use PERL, REXX, and occasionally PYTHON, for various
utility tasks, but for the frequent one-shot data conversions, that I
seem to always be encountering, I just naturally seem to gravitate to
AWK most of the time. I guess it's just a better fit to that type of
problem.
--
------------------------------------------------------------
Bernie Schneider: | The villain who twirls his
| mustache is easy to spot. Those
berniegs@ix.netcom.com | who cloak themselves in good
hrrd66a@prodigy.com | deeds are well camouflaged.
| Capt. Jean Luc Picard