[Info-vax] Migrating data from RMS : Available tools

[Hein RMS van den Heuvel]

On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 2:33:44 AM UTC-5, Robert Nelson wrote:
> Hello List
> We would like to migrate data off RMS-based index files. The 2 files have about 30 million records combined.

No big deal but that does not mean it will be easy. 
Do you have a good DDL? CDD-definition? Cobol-Copy-book? C-include file?
Non-vms-native datatypes like a date stuffed into 2 bytes?
Variant structures, where the same bytes mean a different thing/column depending on the type of record in the file? Arrays in the records?


> Our goal is to move the data from RMS to Oracle (not RDB). I would like to know if there are tools that can assist with this : with error logging, repeatability and customisation. 
>

Repeatable as in daily, weekly?
keep the data in-sync in near real-time?
Attunity Replicate can do all that.
 
> My initial investigation's results are :
> 1. ConnX - connect to RMS, configure CDDs and extract RMS data to CSV. Use SQL loader to load data to Oracle. This is a two step process and needs manual steps to extract data from RMS to CSV, verify errors.

Right, and really could use just about any tool. 
If the data is really simple you can even convert to (fixed) length binary file and have Oracle SQL$Loader read it directly with the right definition in the control file.

> 2. I remember Attinuity as a leading vendor for providing solutions to access VMS systems. However, their Replicate product seems to support only DBMS sources. No mention of RMS.
> 

I work for Attunity. Admittedly it's not easy enough to find, but like Brian indicates Attunity fully supports RMS as source. 
We understand many datatypes (connx has even more).
WE certainly have STRING, INTs, FLOATs, vms-date, and many more including 'user-defined-datatypes' requiring a function to convert.

Using our CONNECT tool we can give you SQL access to the data, convert to CSV and so on.

Using REPLICATE and the RMS-LOGGER (which Brian build for us) we can give you near-real-time replication (typically a few seconds latency).

(Unfortunately?) as Eric indicates the product set / solution is geared towards larger customers with critical production needs and the pricing can be prohibitive for a 'simple' mission.

> 3. Oracle Gateways : No love for RMS ?

Used to be. Several flavors, mostly build on an OEM version of the Attunity Connect product

> 4. Open Transl8 - marketed by advancedcomputersoftware & Transoft.

Dunno.
 
> What do you all think? 
Send me an Email? first-name at company dot com.