Suprtool/Open 6.4

User Manual

Doc-To-Help Standard Manual

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Robelle Solutions Technology Inc.

 

 


 

Program and manual copyright © 1981-2022 Robelle Solutions Technology Inc.

 

Permission is granted to reprint this document (but not for profit), provided that copyright notice is given.

 

Qedit and Suprtool are trademarks of Robelle Solutions Technology Inc. Oracle is a trademark of Oracle Corporation, Redwood City, California, USA. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robelle Solutions Technology Inc.

Suite 372 - 7360 137 Street

Surrey, B.C. CanadaV3W 1A3

 

Phone:   604.501.2001

Support: 289.480.1060

 

E-mail:   sales@robelle.com

E-mail:   support@robelle.com

Web:      www.robelle.com


Table of Contents

Suprtool/Open 6.4  1

User Manual 1

Program and manual copyright © 1981-2022 Robelle Solutions Technology Inc. 2

Permission is granted to reprint this document (but not for profit), provided that copyright notice is given. 2

Phone:              604.501.2001  2

Table of Contents  3

Welcome to Suprtool 18

Introduction. 18

Suprtool Components. 18

STExport - Data Export Utility. 18

Rport - Data Reporting Utility. 18

Suprlink - Multidataset Access. 19

Documentation. 19

Notation. 19

Suprtool Version 6.4  21

Highlights in Suprtool 6.4. 21

Highlights in Suprtool 6.3.01. 22

Highlights in Suprtool 6.3. 22

Highlights in Suprtool 6.2. 23

Highlights in Suprtool 6.1. 23

Highlights in Suprtool 6.0. 24

Highlights in Suprtool 5.9. 25

Installing Suprtool 26

Overview.. 26

Who Needs To Use These Instructions. 26

Instructions for Installing. 26

Quick Start Guide for Suprtool 27

How to Run Suprtool 27

What is a Task?. 27

Copying Files. 27

Copying One File. 27

Appending to a File. 28

Fields in Data Files. 28

What is a Self-Describing File?. 28

Creating an SD File. 28

Define Fields in a Data File. 28

Create an SD File from a Data File. 29

Repeating Commands. 29

Repeating a Command. 29

Selecting Database Records. 30

Select All Records. 30

Look at the First Few Records. 30

Selecting by Criteria. 31

Simple Criteria. 31

Complex Criteria. 31

String of Digits. 31

Selecting by Date. 31

Select by Today's Date. 32

Select by Particular Date. 32

Select by Year 32

Select Prior Month. 32

Selecting by Lists of Values. 33

Finding Data Based on a List 33

Finding Data Based on a File. 33

Finding Data Based on Another Table’s Criteria. 34

Finding Data in a Data File. 34

Sorting Database Records. 34

Sort Records. 34

Sort Records in Descending Order 35

Sort by Multiple Keys. 35

Duplicate Records. 35

Report without Duplicate Records. 35

Report Only the Duplicate Records. 36

Report Only the Unique Records. 36

Report Only the Duplicates and Their Originals. 37

Deleting Duplicate Data File Records. 37

Decimal Places. 38

Converting Numbers. 38

Counts and Subtotals. 39

Count and Subtotal on Sort Keys. 39

Sort by Count or Subtotal 39

Total by Field. 40

Running Totals. 40

Running SubTotals. 40

Listing Records. 41

Changing the Output Record Format 41

Producing a Condensed Table Listing. 42

Simple Reports. 42

Your First Report 42

Column Headings. 43

Printing Mailing Labels. 43

Running Suprtool 45

Running Suprtool 45

Configuring Different Shells. 45

Bash Shell 45

Dynamic Loading. 45

Control Characters and stty. 46

Suprmgr Configuration Files. 46

On-Line vs. Batch Access. 46

Command Line Options. 46

Initial Command Line:  -ccmdstring. 47

Default Outcount File Name:  -oc. 47

Exit with Verify:  -v. 47

Combining -c and -v. 47

Loader Warnings. 47

Unix/Linux Notes. 48

Shell Commands. 48

Endian Support 48

Sdlinux Utility. 50

Hardcoded File Names and ROBELLE Variable. 51

ROBELLE Variable. 51

/opt/robelle/suprmgr 51

Outcount File. 52

Differences Between MPE and Open. 52

Record Length. 52

Line Feeds. 52

Duplicate Output Files. 52

Classic Reals. 53

Input from Stdlist 53

Missing Features. 54

Suprtool Issues and Solutions  55

A Suprtool Task. 55

Input Choices. 55

Processing Selections. 55

Output Choices. 55

Suprtool and Oracle. 56

Data-Types. 56

Number Data-Type. 56

Order By vs. Sort 57

Restrictions. 57

Suprtool and Self-Describing Files. 57

Create an SD File from a Table. 57

Create an SD File from a Data File. 57

SD Files as Input 58

Listing SD Files. 58

Decimal Places and Date Formats. 58

Extended Field Names. 58

Restrictions of SD Files. 59

Suprtool and Sorting Files. 59

Suprtool and Personal Computers. 59

Downloading to the PC.. 59

Decimal Places. 59

Spreadsheets. 60

Two-Digit Year Solutions. 60

What If I Have Four-Digit Years?. 60

What does Set Date Cutoff do?. 60

Stddate and Set Date Cutoff. 61

What does Set Date ForceCentury do?. 61

What If I Have Two-Digit Years?. 61

What Is Wrong with Two-Digit Years?. 62

How Do $Today and $Date Work?. 62

Will Suprtool Generate an Error for Two-Digit Year Dates?. 63

How Do I Use $Today and $Date with yymmdd Dates?. 63

aammdd Date Format 63

Invalid Dates. 64

Can Suprtool Convert Two-Digit Years to Four Digits?. 64

Case 1:  Converting a J2 Date from yymmdd to ccyymmdd. 64

Case 2:  X6 yymmdd Data to X8 ccyymmdd. 65

Case 3:  Different Date Formats X6 MMDDYY Data to X6 YYMMDD.. 67

Performance. 68

Eloquence Performance. 68

Sort Performance. 68

Oracle Performance. 69

Analyzing Performance Data. 69

Variable Substitution. 69

Suprtool Functions. 70

UC4/Scripting and Functions. 70

String/Byte Functions. 70

$TRIM (Works on byte type fields) 70

If Usage: 71

Extract Usage (target: Byte type fields) 71

Example: 71

Data Examples Before and After: 71

$LTRIM (Works on Byte type fields) 71

If Usage: 71

Extract Usage (target: Byte type fields) 71

Example: 71

Data Examples before and after: 71

$RTRIM (Works on Byte type fields) 72

If Usage: 72

Extract Usage (target: Byte type fields) 72

Example: 72

Data Examples: 72

Data Result 72

$UPPER (Works on Byte-type fields) 72

If Usage: 73

Extract Usage (target: Byte type fields) 73

Example: 73

Data Examples: 73

$LOWER (Works on Byte-type fields) 73

If Usage: 73

Extract Usage: 73

Example: 73

Data Examples: 73

$PROPER (Works on Byte-type fields) 73

If Usage: 74

Extract Usage: 74

Example: 74

Data Examples: 74

$SPLIT (Works on Byte-type fields) 74

If Usage: 74

Extract Usage: 74

Data Examples: 74

Data Examples: 74

$FINDCLEAN (Works on Byte-type fields) 75

If Usage: 75

$CLEAN (Works on Byte-type fields) 75

If Usage: (Not commonly used) 75

Extract Usage: 75

Example: 75

Data Examples: 75

$TRANSLATE (Works on Byte-type fields) 75

If Usage: 76

Extract Usage: 76

Data Examples: (Using above code) 76

$JUSTIFYL (Works on Byte-type fields) 76

If Usage: 76

Extract Usage: 76

Data Examples: (Using above code) 76

$JUSTIFYR (Works on Byte-type fields) 76

If Usage: 76

Extract Usage: 76

Data Examples: (Using above code) 76

$LEADZEROB (Works on Byte-type fields) 77

If Usage: 77

Extract Usage: 77

Data Examples: (Using above code) 77

$RESPACE (Works on Byte-type fields) 77

If Usage: 77

Extract Usage: 77

Data Examples: (Using above code) 77

$LENGTH (Works on Byte-type and numeric fields) 77

If Usage: 78

Extract Usage: 78

$ETOA.. 78

Extract Usage: 78

$ATOE.. 78

Extract Usage: 78

String Addition. 78

Extract Usage: 79

Example: 79

Data Result: 79

Numeric Functions. 79

$TRUNCATE.. 79

If Usage: 79

Extract Usage: 79

$ABS. 79

IF Usage: 79

Extract Usage: 79

$TOTAL.. 80

IF Usage: 80

Extract Usage: 80

$SUBTOTAL.. 80

IF Usage: 80

Extract Usage: 81

Example of $TOTAL and $SUBTOTAL.. 81

$COUNTER.. 81

IF Usage: 81

Extract Usage: 82

$SUBCOUNT.. 82

IF Usage: 82

Extract Usage: 82

Examples for $counter and $subcount: 82

$SIGNED.. 83

IF Usage: 83

Extract Usage: 83

$LEADZEROZ (Works on Display-type fields) 83

If Usage: 83

Extract Usage: 83

Data Examples: (Using above code) 83

Arithmetic Operations. 83

+ - * / mod. 83

If Usage: 84

Extract Usage: 84

Conversion/Formatting. 84

$NUMBER.. 84

If Usage: 84

Extract Usage: 84

Data Examples: 84

$EDIT.. 84

If Usage: 85

Extract Usage: 85

Data Examples: 85

Other Functions. 85

$LOOKUP. 85

If Usage: 85

Extract Usage: 85

$READ.. 85

If Usage: 86

$INRECNUM... 86

If Usage: 86

Extract Usage: 86

Date Functions. 86

$TODAY.. 86

If Usage: 86

Extract Usage: 86

$DATE.. 86

If Usage: 87

Extract Usage: 87

$INVALID.. 87

If Usage: 87

Extract Usage: 87

$STDDATE.. 87

If Usage: 87

Extract Usage: 87

$DAYS. 88

If Usage: 88

Extract Usage: 88

$MONTH.. 88

If Usage: 88

Extract Usage: 88

Suprtool Commands  89

General Notes. 89

Abbreviating. 89

Uppercase or Lowercase. 89

Multiple Commands per Line. 89

Continuation. 90

Comments on Command Lines. 90

OS Commands. 91

Calculator 91

Control-Y Interrupt 91

Add Command  [Add] 92

Notes. 92

Examples. 92

Base Command  [BA] 94

Before Command  [B] 96

Chain Command  [C] 98

Clean Command  [CL] 100

Removing Bad Characters. 100

Define Command  [D] 101

Delete Command  [DEL] 106

Do Command  [DO] 108

Duplicate Command  [DU] 109

Edit Command  [ED] 114

Exit Command  [E] 115

Export Command  [EXP] 116

Extract Command  [EXT] 117

Constants. 117

Dates. 119

Range of Fields. 121

Numeric Expressions. 122

$SubTotal Function. 124

$Total Function. 124

$Counter Function. 124

String Expressions. 125

Splitting Variable Length Strings. 126

Cleaning your Data. 127

Un-printables. 128

Clean Command Syntax. 128

Setting the Clean Character 128

Cleaning a Field. 128

Cleaning your data. 129

Extract from a Table. 129

Data Conversion. 130

$Number Function. 131

Numeric to Byte Conversion. 132

$Edit Function. 133

Placeholders and Format Characters. 133

Byte-Type Formatting. 133

Z-placeholder for byte-fields. 134

Overflow and limits. 134

Numeric field edit-masks. 135

Signs. 135

Decimal Places. 136

Data and Edit mask: 136

Currency and Dollar signs. 136

Overflow and floating dollar 137

Set CurrencySymbol 137

Overflow and limits. 137

Restrictions. 137

Form Command  [F] 140

Get Command  [G] 143

Help Command  [H] 145

If Command  [IF] 146

Expressions. 146

Constants. 149

Subscripts. 150

Numeric Expressions. 151

String Expressions. 153

Date Selection. 156

Long Expressions