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ExportBlock

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Timothy Slater edited this page May 9, 2018 · 1 revision

Overview

An ExportBlock represents the output data of a single EXPORT statement. It captures a variety of information like the record name, columns, and the actual data.

These blocks are made of a mix between standard ASCII and encoded sections using the standard encoding scheme.

An export block is made up of the following broad sections:

  • Export Statement
  • Record Metadata*
  • Column List
  • Data Rows

Export Statement

This is a standard ASCII section that contains the original EXPORT statement. This can span multiple lines and is ended once a / is seen on its own line.

Here is an example:

EXPORT  PSOPRDEFN.PSOPRDEFN WHERE 
OPRID IN ('VP1')

Record Metadata

Immediately following the export statement is a encoded blob of binary information. This section represents a lot of metadata about the record. There are a lot of pieces to it so it is documented separately here

The encoded information is wrapped by lines with just a / on them, for example:

/
A(E)B(AA)A(N)B(AA)A(G)B(AAAAAA)A(P)B(AA)A(S)B(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)
B(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)
B(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)A(P)B(AA)A(S)B(AA)
...
/

Column List

After the record metadata there is an regular ASCII section that denotes the columns of the table. The general format for this is COLUMN_NAME:TYPE(SIZE)~~~

The columns are appended such that no line exceeds 70 characters.

Example:

EMPLID:CHAR(11)~~~NAME_TYPE:CHAR(3)~~~NAME_USAGE:CHAR(10)~~~
SAE_TARGET_ID:CHAR(50)~~~SAE_LIS_NAME_TYPE:CHAR(4)~~~
SAE_LIS_NAME_LNAME:CHAR(30)~~~COUNTRY_NM_FORMAT:CHAR(3)~~~
NAME:CHAR(50)~~~NAME_INITIALS:CHAR(6)~~~NAME_PREFIX:CHAR(4)~~~

Data Rows

The data rows section is wrapped in / lines similar to the Record Metadata. Between these lines there are zero to many Rows.

Each row consists of a comma separated list of values, where each value represents 1 column of data from the row. Each specific column value is encoded.

An example row would be:

A(000000019),A(0001),A(000115),A(000001086),A( ),A( ),
//

This example shows a single row of data, that has 6 columns.

note: The column values themselves are encoded, this does not include the commas between columns, they should be printed out normally.

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