XML, XSLT and DFSORT, Part Two - DFSORTFollowing on from this post and this one, this post discusses the DFSORT piece. The DFSORT code in this post parses the Comma-Separated Variable (CSV) file produced by XSLT processing. In this simple example it merely produces a flat file report, but the post has a few additional details you might find valuable. First, here's the SORTIN DD JCL statement. It's not like a regular sequential file statement as it has to access the zFS file system we wrote the data to with Saxon:
Of particular note in this DD statement is the record format (VB), the logical record length (255) and the block size (32760). This is definitely VB data. I've found a LRECL greater than the maximum size Saxon has produced is fine. Similarly a sensible block size works. FILEDATA=TEXT is also needed. Here's the SYMNAMES file:
You'll need an accompanying SYMNOUT DD - for the messages DFSORT (or ICETOOL) produce when the SYMNAMES file is processed. I'm showing you this first so you can understand the main DFSORT control statements file: Everywhere you see the symbol "Row" in these statements you can interpret it as "%01", whatever that is. Similarly for "a" and "%02". The "RDW" symbol maps the Record Descriptor Word that we need for variable-length record processing. (DFSORT can convert from variable- to fixed-record format but we won't do that here.) Now for the control statements:
This is a very simple case of using DFSORT. So, for example, there's no SORT, no OUTFIL, nor any ICETOOL sophistication. It's meant to show how you can get the data into a format DFSORT can use. Let me explain how it works:
And here's the output:
Of course we needn't have just printed the data, as I've indicated. With a more interesting data set you could do a lot more. The use of symbols ("Row" and "a") was largely gratuitous here. It just shows you can use them. If you're a regular DFSORT or ICETOOL user you'll know their value. If you were to strip this down to the bare essentials the first WHEN=INIT does most of the work - parsing the data into fixed positions. (The one really useful thing the second WHEN=INIT does is to convert the numeric field into a packed decimal number.) So, over these three posts I've shown how you can use XSLT to half tame XML data and DFSORT to complete the taming. I have a couple of other things I want to talk about in relation to this. But those belong in a separate post. 
DISCOVER RELATED RESOURCES TAGGED [sff when=init dfsort parse z/os icetool xalan saxon symbols csv xslt xml]
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