SanSoft's Utility Package

SSIUtils are an integrated suite of utilities intended for use by both programmers and end-users in a COBOL environment. Individually or collectively, the SSIUTILS will pay for themselves many times over in productivity gains and by giving users rapid, easy access to important data. The SSIUTILS are field-proven, extremely easy to learn and use, and can be adapted to many valuable uses within any organization. The SSIUTILS perform functions your organization uses today, only faster and more accurately.

SSIUtils have the following features and capabilities:

1. All individual functional companents are menu-driven and function-key oriented, thereby insuring maximum productivity and ease of use. 
2. They are designed for use by COBOL program developers and end-users alike. 
3. All displays employ a character-based screen interface, and are compatible with terminal emulators and GUI implementations.

The utilities included are:

• Create
• Display
• Control
• Datentry
• Inquiry
• Report
• Tapecopy

Top of Page

CREATE

Creates data files of all types. Input can be from existing files, literal strings, pad characters ASCII numeric sequences

General Uses

• Creating test files and modifying existing file formats
• Initializing/populating COBOL databases
• Extracting/Merge Records and Fields from existing data files to create new files
• Concatenating Files

Back to Utilities

Display enables programmers and end-users to display the contents of any format data file. Display automatically uncompresses records, allows data to be displayed in both ASCII and hex formats and enables entire files (or portions) to be printed. Records in indexed files can be displayed in any index order and searches can be made using both key values and literals.

General Uses

• Validating/examining data file contents
• Display print files in 80 or 132 column mode
• Examining files for corruption
• Terminal-oriented Display mechanism for use with all SSIUTILS

Back to Utilities

Control is a utility which establishes a logical view (format) of a data file to be used by the SSIUTILS Datentry, Inquiry, and Report. Field names, definitions and characteristics are defined within Control. Comprehensive functional permissions, field validation criteria, and restrictions for end-user data entry, inquiry and reporting can also be established.

General Uses

• Creating end-user oriented views of datafiles
• Establishing validation tables or ranges for data to be input into data files
• Definition of data entry sequence of fields within a file
• Define additional (logical) fields for accumulation

Back to Utilities

• Quick modification of existing data
• Populate data files from the keyboard
• View field names and associated data in an easy-to-read, formatted way

Back to Utilities

• Ad hoc inspection of field names and associated values based upon logical criteria
• Scenario (what-if) development
• Data extraction into another file for further processing/analysis
• Creation of a skeleton Report Definition File for use with the SSIUTILS Report utility

Back to Utilities

Report is a simple-to-use-and-understand reporting tool which features step-by-step instructions for non-technical users. A primary file and a secondary file can be used to create the report, records can be sorted in either ascending or descending order, and new fields can be derived from existing fields. The appearance of the printed output can be adjusted by using a full range of editing options, including report title, column heading, total and control breaks.

General Uses

• End-user defined ad hoc reports
• Regular or ad hoc reporting of important or critical information
• Extracting new information based upon existing data
• Preprocess data for subsequent manipulation and analysis

Back to Utilities

Tapecopy is a data exchange utility for use with all forms of tape media and EBCDIC/ASCII files. Conversion of data can occur at the field level. Both tape and disk files can be utilized. Tapecopy's Transl feature provides for custom conversion tables.

General Uses

• Processing of IBM and ANSI labeled tapes
• Exchange of data on tape media between IBM Mainframe and Unix systems
• Data communication (RJE) between IBM Mainframe and Unix systems (Transl feature)
• Creation of tape data for exchange with outside organizations (Fed. Reserve, financial institutions/services)

Back to Utilities

Top of Page