Re: IBM i file transfer rant

[Paul Roy <paul.roy@xxxxxxx>]

John, 

IMHO, File transfer was a great tool in the time of S/38 Pc Support ... 
and is still supported by IBM with the new ACS but
Have you tried tu set up a database (ODBC) connexion between the db2 and 
excell..  it should make no difference between db2, oracle,Sql or any 
other so called  one click option... 

Paul 




From:   DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To:     Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, 
john erps <jacobus.erps@xxxxxxxxx>
Date:   10/11/2017 14:03
Subject:        Re: IBM i file transfer rant
Sent by:        "MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx>



John,
                 Have you suggested to IBM that an option to 'take all the 
defaults' 
would be a great option? Perhaps call it 'Quick excel upload' or some 
such?
                 Have you opened a PMR on this issue?
                 Anyone who reads this list will know that I love to throw 
down a good 
rant on IBM (and others, they just don't get on here) but if you've not 
attempted to work with IBM to enhance or correct the error then the rant 
loses a lot of steam. It's not like this product has 20 years under it's 
belt at this point.

         - Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 11/10/2017 6:19 AM, john erps wrote:
> <rant>
>
> I'm trying to use the ACS IBM i file transfer utility to upload an excel
> file to a *FILE.
>
> This shouldn't be too difficult.
> It's not possible to simply point to an excel sheet, specify the name of
> the *FILE and just let the tool figure out the defaults (convention over
> configuration).
> But no, i have to use the wizard to generate some .fdfx file, clicking
> "next" each time and accepting the defaults which are ok (why can't the
> utility do this automatically).
> Then, after creating the .fdfx, i can upload the excel file (well that's
> the idea).
> However, then i get an error that a numeric column of the *FILE created 
by
> the wizard does not correspond to an excel column which is now 
determined
> to be CHAR.
> However, the file was created by the wizard which determined earlier 
that
> the column is numeric.
> But when uploading the column is suddenly determined to be CHAR.
>
> So i give up on this piece of ...  IBM unhelpful utility.
> And resort to save to CVS and ftp and CPYFRMIMPF.
> Why is this simple task (uploading an excel to a database table) so
> problematic?
>
> Really a wonder that IBM i still exists ( or IBM ).
>
> I bet that uploading excel to SQL server (or Oracle or any other) is 
just
> point and click, accepting the defaults.
>
> </rant>