IBM Mainframe Forum

Perhaps a moderator will move this topic to Cobol.

Generally speaking, when the "key" term is used in our trade, the "key" is located at a fixed position in a record and it has a fixed length. What you want to do is search an entire record for your text. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is usually much slower than doing a compare at a fixed position, and it's worse for you because you want to test multiple "keys" for each record, and you may find yourself reading the entire "flat file 2" to check for your keys only to abandon the process.

You might be better off if you do the key search as part of your copy and then do something to delete the copy if there is no key match. If your shop uses the CA-1 tape management product, for example, you can define the copy as being catalog controlled, and delete the catalog entry for the copy if there is no key match. In a day or two, CA-1 will cycle the tape into the scratch tape pool. I think you can do something similar with the IBM RMM tape management product, but I don't know the mechanics. Talk to your support people to discuss the mechanics for the tape management product your shop uses.

The key (and I'm using the generic meaning here) to what you really want to do depends on the size of the dataset, how often the copy is not done because of a failure to match a key, and how deep you must read the source file before you match a key.

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3. I need to search the Key, anywhere in the flat file2 record.[/b][/color]

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I need to ful fill the 3rd step here...
Could you provide me with some suggestion???

Onemore thing, Is it okay to continue this topic in JCL forums or do I need to start as a new topic in COBOL forums???

Pull the Cobol manuals up on your screen and start reading about INSPECT. Pay particular attention to the TALLYING part, but pick up the other stuff while you're there (always good to know the sort of things that you know are in the manual, then you know where to find them for next time).

If you can crack it with INSPECT, I'll show you an alternative as well. If you get stuck with INSPECT, let us know and someone will assist.

I wrote the cobol program finally.......

Thanks to all...